2024-03-28 05:20:36
The Czech snowboard cross team, including reigning world champion Eva Adamczykvá, has dyed her hair blonde. It caused Radek Houser’s third place in Saturday’s World Cup race in Canada’s Mont-Sainte-Anne, explained coach Marek Jelínek.
Adamczyková, a natural brunette, spent four hours in the hairdresser’s chair after arriving from Canada due to a radical color change.
The bet fell already at the beginning of the season. “We wanted to make it an internally motivating factor. We said that if the boys got a medal in the world class, we would go for platinum blonde,” explained Jelínek.
Kryštof Choura was already close to the podium in the January race in Svaté Morice, where he finished fourth. In the end, Houser took care of the first Czech podium in the men’s category after 15 years on the last racing weekend. And immediately in Canada, Adamczyková painted the heads of her colleagues. She didn’t only have to take care of Jan Kubičík, who already had a blond streak. “After the race, we drove to the store, we bought something there,” Adamczyková explained.
She consulted remotely with Blanka Hašková, who was in charge of hairstyles in the last year of the StarDance dance competition. There she took care of Adamczyk’s hair as well, who went to see her right after returning to Prague. “I kept it for the Czech Republic. If I let the boys bleach me, it wouldn’t have turned out well. I went to Blanička straight from the airport. I spent four hours at her place and this is the result,” said the Olympic champion from Sochi 2014.
She didn’t make a big deal out of the radical change. “I’m not worried about my hair, it will grow back to my original hair. Even my Marek was fine, he just laughed at me,” said Adamczyková.
The members of the implementation team had a more difficult time at home. Coach Jelínek and serviceman Tomáš Kašpar’s new look was sharply criticized by their daughters. Especially Kašparova, who will soon turn 18, was very upset. “She told me that I ruined the most important day of her life, that she doesn’t even want to see me,” confided the serviceman.
Before the season, he was worried about the first winter without the possibility of using fluoro waxes, but in the end they did not come true. “To sum it up, from this point of view it was completely problem-free. Then the other side of things was to make the best of it against strong teams that have better personnel and financial security. There it was a bit of a scam,” he said.
Coach Jelínek appreciated that well-prepared boards were the basis of a successful season. In it, not only Adamczyková, but also her national team colleagues promoted themselves. In addition to Houser’s third and Chour’s fourth place, Jan Kubičík, who was sixth in Sierra Nevada, was also successful.
Now everyone is waiting for a one-month break, preparation for the next season will start in May. The highlight of the 2024/25 competition year will be the world championship in St. Moritz and probably the World Cup race in Lower Moravia.
The Czech snowboard cross team would like to spend the summer training in the snow again in the southern hemisphere. Jelínek considers last year’s training in Australia to be essential for later success. “We’d like to go to South America, the most likely is Chile. It’s really cold there and it’s moved closer to the season, so there’s not a month gap, which we had a problem filling. So it looks like we’ll go in September for a month,” he reflected.