I. PKO Praha member Richard Haan — opera singer, 2010 Thalia Award winner and conqueror of the English Channel and Strait of Gibraltar — married on Saturday 9 March 2013. At Mělník Castle, his bride was popular actress, singer and voice actress Jolana Smyčková. Congratulations to the newlyweds!
Below are photographs and two videos of the performance Richard and opera singer Jana Sýkorová gave for guests at the wedding reception. Read more…
UPDATED WITH THE CZECH TELEVISION REPORT
Czech Breaststroke Championships: results
Czech Winter Swimming Cup, Prague-Podolí: results
Duathlon: results
For the first time in our history, our club organised one of the two Czech Championships on each season’s Czech Winter Swimming Cup calendar. Swimmers from all over the country gathered in Podolí Swimming Stadium’s unheated outdoor pool for the Czech Breaststroke Championships. Afterwards, we could celebrate success both as organisers and competitors. Although the water was approaching 8°C, that was still roughly half the temperature at the previous championships in Slavkov eighteen months earlier. The event was held under the patronage of Prague Mayor Doc. MUDr. Bohuslav Svoboda, CSc. At the end of the article is Czech Television’s report for its sports news programme Branky, body, vteřiny. Read more…
UPDATED WITH PRACTICAL INFORMATION
This Saturday, 2 March 2013, we are organising the Czech Breaststroke Championships in Podolí Swimming Stadium’s unheated outdoor pool. After previous editions in Brno and its surroundings, Slavkov and Vyškov, the championships are moving to Prague for the first time. Racing starts at 10:30 on Saturday under the patronage of Prague Mayor Doc. MUDr. Bohuslav Svoboda, CSc. The current start list is linked below. Read more…
Our club enjoyed a very successful Czech Freestyle Championships on Saturday 9 February. Our swimmers brought ten medals out of the Svratka in Brno-Bystrc. Only host club Fides beat us in the club medal table: with the same total number of medals, they had more golds. Read more…
An official air temperature eighteen degrees warmer than last year greeted swimmers at our second home competition, Braník Ice, also held as the second Ladislav Nicek Memorial. Even so, participants were not denied an extreme experience. Last year it was −14°C frost; this year the Vltava was well above the first flood-alert threshold. The exceptionally fast current drew ninety entrants to the longest race, one kilometre. Read more…
Friday 1 February, 11:00–11:30
The Vltava remains within its banks along almost the entire course. The exception is a roughly 200-metre stretch between the bridge and the beginning of the island, where the bank is lowest. Here, water has spilled about two metres out of the river towards the parallel path. Access is straightforward along the whole course. The current is between 50 and 60 metres per minute. The gallery below shows the current conditions. Read more…
This Saturday’s Castle Circuit in Choceň was the final January round of the Czech Winter Swimming Cup. With a maximum distance of 500 metres and untimed swims, Choceň usually attracts the smallest field of the season, and this year was no exception. Numbers were also reduced because most swimmers had already tried part of the course in December: with almost the entire Orlice frozen, the planned Peliny Park race had been replaced by a non-competitive swim on the January course. Fifty swimmers attended this non-competitive event, including twelve from I. PKO — both the lowest figures of the current season. Read more…
Náchod results — updated
Updated 22 January 2013 following corrections to the official results.
After the non-competitive event in Pardubice, the second Saturday in January brought our first serious test of 2013. The preceding days’ frosty weather suggested that the 29 I. PKO swimmers travelling to Náchod would certainly not feel warm. That proved correct: snow, air at −5°C and water only 1°C above freezing awaited them. The original plan had been to swim a circuit, but despite the organisers’ enormous efforts that proved impossible, and we swam downstream instead. Read more…
Air at 6.0°C, water at 6.2°C. Today, Prague-Braník hosted the traditional cold-water swimmers’ baptism. Our new members and several other visitors were baptised with Vltava water. Below are their names, photos and a report from TV Barrandov’s main news. Read more…
Two days before the traditional swimmers’ baptism in Braník this Sunday at 10:30, Tomáš and Táňa Prokop appeared on TV Metropol’s Pražský expres. They spoke with presenter Petra Slancová about the upcoming baptism, their beginnings in cold-water swimming and swimmers’ lives in general. Watch the programme below. Read more…
