Raška & Sakala: Past Glory & Content Writer Roles

Rasha. Plot. Sakala. Barbel. Weir. Janda… Ski jumping belonged to the turn of the year like gifts or potato salad, Czechs enjoyed them together with vanilla rolls. At Christmas, unwrap presents, then watch a fairy tale – and on January 1, turn on the TV and keep your fingers crossed for the Czechs in Ga-Pa during the Tour of the Four Bridges.

Equivalent rituals for sports enthusiasts.

The biathlon phenomenon did not exist yet, ski jumping stole the attention of the fans. All the more, how many medals were ringing.

After all, the man who connects both worlds has the same memories: the glorious past and the present without fanfare.

“I was at home in Frenštát and if I remember correctly, I had just come from training. And I ran straight to the TV,” Filip Sakala remembers how exactly twenty years ago he threw a bag of sweaty things in a corner.

So much time has passed since the moment that reminded Ota Pavel’s magical words: “It was a wonderful flight in endless silence that lasted a short human age. He gave his whole life to the jump. He got into the right position in the air and flew like an albatross bird in the best times, when the right sea wind carries him.”

Crowds were watching, including nine-year-old Filip Sakala. Only it was not the famous Tale of Rašek, but the Tale of Jando. On January 6, 2006, Jakub Janda became the winner of the Four Bridges Tour. As only the second Czech – 35 long years after Jiří Rašek, one of the country’s most famous athletes and a golden Olympian from Grenoble, who flew like an albatross.

The joy all around! Sakala still remembers her well.

“Jakub is from Frenštát like me, for many boys in my neighborhood it was a big deal, it was dealt with in schools,” he explains. “And I, at the age of nine at the time, was set to win the Tour five times myself, and I had a lot of Olympic medals and World Cup wins on top of that. I took it for granted.”

Surely you understand – the surname Sakala is still known even by those who just go shopping. His dad Jaroslav has an Olympic bronze medal from 1992 and a bunch of other medals in his display case, he is now the head coach of the association.

But the times of Raška, Sakala or Janda suddenly seem like a dusty memory. No one writes a new fairy tale.

In the meantime, the nine-year-old boy became the sports director of the jumping section, which is why he is the optimal respondent – ​​his person combines long-ago childhood dreams of Olympic gold, the tradition and weight of the legacy of his sport and, above all, the desire for the Czechs to fly like albatross again, especially when the next Olympics are approaching.

And enough Ota Pavla! After all, even Filip Sakala emphasizes: “Sentiment kills people’s thinking.”

He himself took 51st place in the middle bridge qualification at the last Olympics in Beijing 2022. Roman Koudelka finished 18th in the final, Čestmír Kožíšek was 29th. That’s light years away from Jando’s triumph.

“It wasn’t until I took part in the Tour that I fully realized what a success it was,” Sakala recalls of the twenty-year-old sensation. “Then you appreciate it much more. It’s definitely not a matter of luck, you really have to be on top for ten days.”

The favor of fate and nature – especially in the form of gusts of wind – has always been a part of ski jumping. On the Four Bridge Tour, these influences recede, but mainly they are insignificant in the long term. Raška’s Czech successors are not facing a headwind, the reasons are elsewhere. And there are plenty of them.

“Jakub’s triumph was the result of a strong generation that grew up knowing that our sport was a phenomenon among the general public,” says Sakala. “But it was the last success, the boom failed to be used. The membership base was narrowing, as was the interest of any entities to enter the jumps financially. And the bridges were not reconstructed.”

This is a familiar analysis. Czech sport is not flourishing overall – it is generally troubled by the combination of a significantly lower number of interested parties and a lack of money. Add the specifics of the fact that floating through the air like an albatross has always been an activity for the chosen ones, concentrated in a few places like Frenštát or Harrachov. Or that the hour-long wait for the last and decisive jump is already enjoyed by far fewer spectators in the frenzied, sloshing time, that Rašk’s sport needs new formats, new dynamics.

But similar longings can also be heard from football, hockey, and ball sports: the Czech Republic is standing still, while the competition is blazing forward.

They are building elsewhere, our infrastructure is deteriorating. For jumps, the influences multiplied.

“We are left with bridges with an older profile, while the trend is that the European ones have changed,” says Sakala. “We had another stronger generation that could attack the world. Roman Koudelka was able to do it, but there were also Kožíšek, Vojtěch Štursa, former junior world champion Viktor Polášek. But you get to the point where there was nowhere to train, you have to go abroad… That’s what happens to a lot of non-mass sports. We sometimes even conjure up miracles with almost.”

From his internal perspective. But it’s not enough for the fans. This brings us back to the fact that the past – however beautiful, however glorious – can harm today’s jumpers. Sakala makes no secret of this idea. And they don’t see it as any blasphemy.

“From my point of view as someone who understands the sport, when someone does a fantastic result in an international race, I get negative feedback: Why are you even celebrating? Are you crazy?” Sakala interprets. “I realized that we have to respect the past, that’s why we try to return former jumpers to the system as much as possible. But at the same time, have the mindset that it was like this before and it must be like this now… What was, is great, thank God for it. But we should take the next step and stop comparing ourselves to the past.”

And offers an example from the neighbors. When the Slovaks fell even deeper in the jumps, they were forced to disband the national team. But last year, 17-year-old Hektor Kapustík in Planica set a new national record by flying 202 meters and ended the euphoria.

“You see the enthusiasm, that’s what we should learn,” says Sakala. “They are happy about little things and that is the environment that recharges athletes. I also once jumped over two hundred meters in Planica, but it was because of our past that I returned home saying that it was a failure.”

Here, after all, one mention of the Tale of Rašek is appropriate. It is the very last sentence of the novella, about the champion’s reflection in the calm of the Wallachian hills, described by Ota Pavle as follows: “And he also saw his happiness. It was composed of courage and work.”

That is something that Sakala can sign.

“I believe we are taking steps forward. We want to spread positive thinking, all the more so then we will raise the successors of Jakub Janda and others,” he says. “The sports director’s perspective is one of the best, there are so many ideas and possibilities, I see huge potential. But most visions fail because there is no money. It takes energy for the coaches, and when you have an overloaded coach, the athlete feels it. Like it or not.”

According to him, 95 percent of the income in ski jumping comes from public sources. Sakala calculates the individual items: hundreds of thousands of crowns as an investment in the development of materials (knowing that even more would be needed) or 300 to 400 thousand for computer technology analyzing the wind.

And these are still fractions against the essential.

“First and foremost, it’s about infrastructure,” he says. After all, the reconstruction of the bridge in Harrachov was supposed to cost 70 million crowns, but at the moment everything is at a standstill due to disputes with the management of the Skiers’ Association, which resulted in the dismissal of the former head of the jumping section Víto Háček (List News described the case in detail in December).

For an industry that has lost its luster, such cases are critical. According to Sakala, the contractor of small bridges should soon start competing in Frenštát.

“These are essential for recruiting children,” he says. “Then it’s always about the people from the individual clubs, whether they can reach the children, what they can offer them, how they can keep them entertained. In order for the sport to stand on its feet, it is not enough to have two representatives at the top. You have to do it so that even a child from a socially weaker class, thanks to the system, has the opportunity to go to the Olympics one day.”

Even if a “favorable wind blows” and the situation in Harrachov changes for the better, the revival of the former pride of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic will take time. In this respect, sport is strikingly reminiscent of, for example, education, a similarly robust system, in principle resistant to change. Even if they occur, they will not manifest themselves immediately, but after many years.

“We want to show the public that our sport is attractive to spectators and relatively safe,” emphasizes Sakala. “Something is going well, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

For fans used to Raška, Janda or the medal harvest of Sakal’s father, the present seems poor. However, the sports director of the association sees no problem in the fact that he also encourages joy from less glittering results.

“Jumping is not yet a well-paid sport, Roman Koudelka and both girls (Klára Ulrichová and Anežka Indráčková) jump to win. However, maximum motivation does not lead to maximum performance in sports, optimal motivation leads to optimal performance,” he judges. “For me, it’s more about not taking each partial success lightly. Some results deserve to be celebrated.”

No, it’s not yet for any monumental celebrations, like when Raška was greeted by crowds and his successors were contemporary sports celebrities.

“But absolutely anything can happen in ski jumping,” says Sakala, looking towards the Olympics in Italy. “And I am convinced that someone will shine there. That success will come.”