First Slovak medal at the Winter Olympics!
Yesterday at the Olympics in Tourin, Italy, Slovakia got their first Winter Olympics medal after becoming independent in 1993. Silver medal was won by Radoslav Židek in Snowboard cross - sport introduced only this year to the Olympics. I love watching snowboard cross, maybe because looks more like real-life ride in a park resort - trying to enjoy the fast ride down with ocasional jumps, yet trying to avoid collision with other riders. Yes, its exactly like it. I ride snowboard, but i don’t do any tricks. Not good enough yet, thats why its harder for me to “connect” with half-pipers, tho every time i watch them im amaized. Židek (and i wanna make sure you take a note of that little V on top of Z, i’ll talk about it later) could’ve won gold eazily. It looked like he kinda reaxed a tiny bit when he saw he gained disance on the rest of the group and didn’t push it as hard as he could, until an american rider passed him. Maybe he was trying to be safe and not make a stupid fall and loose the whole thing… Don’t get me wrong, though, silver Olympic medal is an amaizing accomplishment. This one in particular: as i’ve said this was first Slovak medal, and this is the first ever Olympic silver medal in snowboard cross. Very special. Other than him, some slovaks are making very close finishes - 4th and 5th places - its a very good sign. And ice hockey team started very strong by winning Russian team (which im, needless to say, very upset about :) ) and then beating Lavtia (who tied the USA in their 1st game ).
Now back to Židek. Name Židek actually reads as Zhidek, not Zidek. I guess for the simplicity reasons all names from nations that use latin based alphabet are written at the international competitions without diacritical symbols. Which produces interesting (but bad) effect - when those names are transliterated further into other languages (since everyone likes to take the information from the official sources, and not all of these athletes are well known) they sound different, and incorrect. Just something i noticed when i was reading Зидек (Zidek) instead of Жидек (Židek) in russian online media. And i don’t see how can it be different in other languages.