“I feel great. It is hard to describe the feelings I have inside. I am truly very happy. I am so excited. After my first run, I was down, I was angry and sad. The second round was a tough battle. But you can never give up in sports. Then anything is possible. You need to fight until the end,” said Petra Vlhová after she finished the slalom at the 24th Winter Olympics in Beijing 2022.

After the first run, she was highly dissatisfied. She entered the second run in eighth place with a large gap to the leader, the German skier Lena Dürr, of 0.72 seconds. However, her coach, Mauro Pini, was the designer of the course for the second run of the slalom. Knowing her strengths, he created a profile tailor-made for Petra. Once again Petra Vlhová did not give up and showed great mettle. She set the best time for the second run and moved into first position, leaving all her rivals behind. Wednesday, 9th February 2022, has gone down in Slovak and Olympic sporting chronicles. Petra Vlhová is the first skier in the history of Slovakia to win an Olympic alpine skiing gold medal.

     However, the Slovak ice hockey players did not make it to the highly desired Olympic final. In the semi-final, they lost 2:0 to the Finnish team, who went on to become Olympic champions. “We have a chance to show how Slovak ice hockey has moved forward. It is an opportunity to show the world where we are and how good we are. It is important for the players to understand that they are still playing for a medal,” said their coach, Craig Ramsay, before the bronze medal match against the Swedish team.                                                                                           Up to that point, the best result achieved by a team from the independent Slovakia was fourth place at the 21st Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. Their victory, 4:0, that won them the bronze medal at the 24th Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022, was decided by accurate shots from Juraj Slafkovský and Samuel Takáč in the second period of the match. In the final period, Slafkovský and Pavol Regenda sealed the bronze medal with goals into the empty net. “We played for each other throughout the whole of the tournament. And now our emotions are incredible. The bronze medal match was very difficult. We put every last ounce of our strength into it. We hit rock bottom,” was how Marek Hrivík, the captain of the Slovak team, evaluated the tournament. On Saturday, 19th February 2022, Slovakia earned its first Olympic ice hockey medal in the history of the independent Slovakia.                                                                                                     

Zdenka Letenayová