The biggest travesty is the lack of attention of Dukla Praha Atletika, a small but legendary track club that produced the two best Decathletes for over a decade now. Tomáš Dvořák and Roman Šebrle were winning medals of all colors at world championships and olympic games, making me wonder why nobody is drooling over what they were doing in training, as they were able to sprint, jump, and throw in amazing feats of power and skill. The real reason is that coaching has less mystery and far more scrutiny. In 1999 when Tomáš won gold in Spain and Roman in Japan, much buzz was about regarding the training they were doing. Images of chain smoking central european coaches with beautiful periodization charts and physiotherapy a la Waldemar seem to be conjured in many heads. No they didn’t use Janda Sandals while max squatting, or do slant boards or baby crawls in the sand pit – since Pavel Kolar was the team Doctor? What they did is a clear history of hard work and sound coaching.
Carl Valle
Latest posts by Carl Valle (see all)
- Thank you EliteTrack! - September 7, 2013
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- Matt Harvey- Superman to Clark Kent - September 4, 2013
- Rotten to the Core? - August 31, 2013