21. 11. 2010
Košice (November 21, 2010) - Jakub Gazda, a junior of the Košice 1904 Wrestling Club, will go down in the history of the Olympic Hopes international tournament in Košice as the only Slovak to win at this year's 13th edition of the event, which was attended by 78 wrestlers from 14 clubs from five countries, including the national teams of Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the best juniors. The Bulgarians played the first fiddle, seconded by the Poles in second place and the Hungarians in third in the team competition.
Although more competitors from a larger number of countries have participated in this event in the past, the organizers of this year's tournament were satisfied with the attendance. This was also confirmed by the coach of the ZK Košice 1904 juniors and the national coach of the SR juniors, Miroslav Jedlička. "Partners from Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary arrived with the best they have at home, and thus ensured an excellent sporting level of the tournament. Unfortunately, only 20 competitors from Slovak clubs participated, eight of whom were from Košice. I am quite disappointed about this, because from the point of view of the national coach, this is the first tournament before the new season where our representatives are supposed to present themselves. Moreover, potential representatives did not even apologize, so I think that my work as a national coach will be very difficult and I will probably focus on the cadets who are just coming up to the junior level. Unfortunately, the state of Slovak youth wrestling is at a very low level, we only have a few boys here who receive a relatively sufficient volume of training. In Slovakia, we have six centers for talented youth focused on freestyle, which include approximately 35 competitors born between 1991 and 1994. They could have competed here, but only a dozen of them showed up at the tournament," the coach complained.
He expressed satisfaction with the performance of Košice's J. Gazda and Peter Pastor, and P. Obžera (Dunajplavba Bratislava), and was also impressed by the performance of Jakub Sciranka (ZK Košice 1904). He expected that another representative of our club, Michael Bodnár, would advance past the Polish number two. It is precisely these two of our wrestlers who will be juniors from next year.
"I was not worried about the other young boys from Košice either, still only cadets Jozef Klimčák, Dávid Polačko, and Maroš Tall, and I am glad that they were able to participate in such a quality tournament," concluded coach M. Jedlička.