Marie Provazníková

Marie Provazníková
Born 24 October 1890
Prague, Austria-Hungary
Died 11 January 1991 (aged 100)
Schenectady, New York, United States
Occupation Sports coach

Marie Provazníková (24 October 1890 11 January 1991) was a Czechoslovak sports official active in the Sokol movement. Born in Prague, she was a coach of the Czechoslovak women’s gymnastics team at the 1948 London Olympics—winning a gold medal—and there she decided to defect, because of "lack of freedom" in her homeland brought about by the February coup.[1] After a few months’ stay in London she moved to the United States and resided there for the rest of her life, teaching PE and organizing Sokol units in the United States and internationally. She lived to see the 1989 Velvet revolution and greeted with enthusiasm the revival of the Czechoslovak Sokol movement after four decades of Communist suppression. She died at the age of 100 years in Schenectady, New York.[2] In 1992 she was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, in memoriam, class III.

Published works

References

  1. Alan Hubbard (17 February 2008). "London 1948 to London 2012: Rags to riches for the 'high-class Del Boy' who dreamt of gold, not money". The Independent. Retrieved 19 Oct 2012.
  2. "Provazníková Marie". Sokolská encyklopedie (in Czech). Česká Obec Sokolská. 2007. Retrieved 2012-10-23.
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