A group of Islanders of Czech ancestry lustily cheered their home nation鈥檚 Olympic berth for Tokyo in basketball. They tracked down and bought several the only 800 pandemic-limited tickets made available for the stunning, heart-racing overtime semifinal win over sa国际传媒 on Saturday and the blowout championship game victory over Greece on Sunday.
They waited outside the Czech team bus behind the Memorial Centre following the championship game and gleefully high-fived the Czech players as they came out of the arena and presented them with two flats of Pilsner Urquell Czech beer, which the players happily grabbed and accepted onto the bus.
鈥淲e did it in hockey at the Nagano Winter Olympics [beating sa国际传媒 in the semifinals and going on to win gold] and now we鈥檝e done it in basketball,鈥� said Lada Cumpelik.
He was there with fellow-Victorians Roman, Helen and Matyas Kobrc, who all felt it more than made up for the Czech Republic鈥檚 quarter-final loss to Denmark in the soccer Euros on Saturday.
鈥淭his is so awesome and exciting and it was an honour to have been here to witness it,鈥� said Roman Kobrc.
The nation has never been to the Olympics in basketball as the Czech Republic but qualified in 1980 at Moscow as Czechoslovakia.
