Ice hockey.

The World Ice Hockey Championships begin today in Bratislava and Košice. It is in fact, without one year, one hundred years since the first world championship (Antwerp, 1920). Major sporting events often have a significant societal impact, and not only in Europe. For us Czechs, hockey is a major and important sport and the annual World Championship is a top ten event. This is despite the fact that the Hockey Federation has just over fifty member countries, fewer than, say, curling. Tradition speaks clearly, the Czechs are a hockey nation, and will remain so for a long time to come. Everyone knows the rules of hockey, and a hockey jersey is a part of almost every family's equipment. Any of the many millions of hockey coaches watching the games from the warmth of their living rooms could put together an optimal national team lineup. Former hockey players are even becoming prominent politicians, such as Augustin Bubník, Jiří Šlégr or, more recently, Milan Hnilička. Also, the involvement of hockey player Jaromír Jágr (along with football player Pavel Nedvěd) in castle activities has had a significant, albeit problematic, marketing impact on the general public. Czech squares fill up whenever a hockey team succeeds, see the gold in Nagano 1998 or the 4 : 3 and 2 : 0 wins over the then Soviet Union in 1969. Whenever we Czechs succeed in sports and in hockey in particular, the impression is given that we are doing great, that we are doing everything right, and in general that we are doing well. We hug and jump, we rejoice and forget our sleep and difficulties. In the current social context, however, we need to make more of our eventual success. It would be great if hockey stars, whose actions, interventions and words and expressions we devour from the screen, would send some visionary signals and once again become a symbol of fair play, justice and the desire for success. Once upon a time, Jaromir Jagr was a skating sixty-eight, and thus a ubiquitous memento of the unjust fate of millions of Czechoslovakians who suffocated for decades under the communist dictatorship. The present demands that certain athletes, and ideally hockey players, once again become symbols and role models for the young and older generation. Unfortunately, Jarda Jagr can no longer be that.

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