Bohumil Janoušek

"We had a training camp again, that's when Slapy dam used. We used to go to Slapy, there was a track and many kilometres of water to ride on. There was a lot of rowing, I remember I had a blisters on my hands, that's one of the rowing specialties, you have calluses, under the calluses a blister, under the blister another callus. There were always beds at night when I was lying down and they had metal frames made of tubes. That was wonderful because I'd lie on my back like that and hold on to that pipe and it was beautifully cold and it cooled my hands and arms beautifully. It helped me madly and I fell asleep beautifully holding on to the tube. That was hilarity."

"It was very interesting, in my case it was the first Olympics. And usually it's the one you remember the most. It makes the biggest impression on you because it's the first one and you don't have anything before to compare it to. Rome had the advantage of being a little bit set in an ancient setting. All the sights were there, not that you had to go around and look for it. It was everywhere, the old Roman monuments. The race was set in quite an interesting environment. This was Albano, the lake, the flooded volcano. You'd drive up there and there'd be nothing. You were being driven there in a bus from the Olympic village, and now all of a sudden you'd drive into a tunnel, drive through, and everything would open up. And you were in a crater where there was a lake and there were high sides. Up there was Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope had his summer residence. And down below that was the lake."

"I had a top guy at the industrial school, Petr Kop, he was a great friend of mine and he played volleyball when he was young. He was very much into coaching. Because I was friends with him and sat at a school desk with him, we used to hang out after school. We used to go to the spa at Na Slupi, and there was steam and things like that. One of his practice drills was we did squat jumps in the steam, a hundred in one go, because volleyball players needed to jump. I used to go in there with him to hold the bunch, and I'd do a hundred squat jumps with him. Not in the gym, but in the steam room to make it even harder and more strenuous. Peter played very well after that, made the national team, and even did silver in Tokyo. The volleyball players made silver there and we 'only' made bronze, that's where we met."

"And my father used to go to work every day, he would go from his house in Zvoly down to Jarov and take the train to Branik, from Branik to the tram and to work. He worked the day, the tram, the train and up to the village. He kept himself in pretty good physical shape doing that every day. And that's where he fought on the barricades, that's where he was wounded. On his way home from work, instead of going home, he started fighting the Germans. It wasn't a very even fight, these guys were desperate and wanted to achieve something, but really the conditions were very difficult." - "Where was the barricade? Or barricades?" - "It was somewhere on the road to Branik, by the quarry. There's a quarry there and there was a barricade by the quarry. And on the other side, on the Štěchovice road, on the concrete road, there were tanks and they were shooting across the river at this barricade. And that's how he was wounded." - "Was he hit by shrapnel, or was it a gunshot, like a machine gun?" - "I don't know the details, we didn't discuss it. We were glad my dad survived. He was shot twice in the abdomen, which was a fatal wound at the time. They operated on him at the general hospital, so he eventually got over it."