Jiří Beran

“When I think back to that year 1984, which was the Olympics that didn’t happen, we prepared for it a lot with the team back then. The team comprised Jarda Jurka, Jirka Douba, Doboš, Kubiša, Beran. We were preparing for it very intensely of course, like for any Olympics. Then we were told we wouldn’t attend the Olympics, which was quite a blow, you can imagine. I still had my profession, I was a construction manager. When I found out we wouldn’t be going, I devoted myself all the more to my work, so it wasn’t so terrible for me. But there were also boy from Dukla there, for whom participating in an Olympics was also interesting financially, they could be promoted and so on. It was the pinnacle they were aiming for. I had two aims - to be good in fencing, but also to have some kind of career. So I was at a slight advantage because of that. Paradoxically, the situation was such that back then in 1984 there was something of a “spite olympics”, a kind of an Olympic substitute. It was attended by the countries that were not participating in the Olympics, that is, the Socialist Bloc. Those were awfully strong countries. That was Cuba, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poles. Those were real fencing superpowers. And at the time in Budapest, which is where this small olympics took place - the Hungarians were actually promised prize money at the same level as if they’d won the Olympics - and we beat the Hungarians back then. Before that we’d beaten the GDR team, which was also excellent. We only lost the first place contest against the Soviet Union. We were really well prepared back then. Jarda Jurka placed second there I think, and I managed to defeat the reigning world champion Papp.”

“Fencing is so strong a sport that it became a lifestyle. Although I still like football, and I still play it for recreation, fencing is another matter. Our whole family except my wife are fencers. My son has long - for about eight years - been our number one, my daughter got herself all the way into the junior national team, then she had to stop because of an injury. My daughter’s husband is a fencer - a four-times national champion - and he also finished his career not long ago. The whole family fences, and we talk about it and even life in similar ways. I’ll give an example. When my daughter was getting married six years ago, she was marrying a fencer, and we couldn’t find a date for the wedding because of various international tournaments. And because they wanted it to be in spring, we found one date. We had to reschedule the tournament in Liberec because the wedding was attended by fencers from all over the country. So it was one big fencers’ wedding. It’s something that I very dearly love to do.”