Sports News
By Nick Carey
Time for the sports roundup now, and after an eventful week that saw the Czechs lose to Iceland and barely scrape past Malta in World Cup qualifying matches, the world of Czech sports has been relatively quiet over the past few days.
We'll start though with the football, and a look at the results from first division matches played on Sunday:
Viktoria Zizkov 2 - Blsany 2
Ostrava 0 - Teplice 2
Drnovice 1 - Synot Stare Mesto 1
Hradec Kralove 2 - Opava 0
Pribram 1 - Liberec 1
Jablonec 0 - Bohemians Prague 0
Slavia Prague 1 - Brno 1
Olomouc 0 - Sparta Prague 3
So, quite a few draws there, and after six games, three Prague teams, Viktoria Zizkov, Slavia and the Bohemians are all on thirteen points at the top of table, with four wins, one draw and one loss apiece. Sparta Prague, which has won every league title since the split of Czechoslovakia, has climbed up the table to twelve points, just one point behind the leaders. But the worst news by far in the league is for Opava, which is sitting at the very bottom of the table, with one point picked up after six games played. There's a very long way to go yet, but Opava certainly has its work cut out for it to catch up with the other teams.
And the world of international football last week saw one big transfer involving a Czech player, and one failed attempt to buy another. Defender Tomas Repka, currently at Italian side Fiorentina, has finally, after much hesitation, agreed to transfer to English premiere division side West Ham United. Repka was reportedly very reluctant to leave Fiorentina, because his family is well settled there. But, after the two clubs had agreed on the deal, Repka finally agreed on Thursday to go to the UK, for a transfer fee of 7.5 million US dollars. Repka has told journalists that he will sign a four-year contract at West Ham.
Borussia Dortmund, which tops the German league at the moment, has announced that it has rejected an offer of 100 million marks, or some 45 million US dollars, from Inter Milan for Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky, who only joined the team last year. If Dortmund has accepted the offer, it would have been the highest ever for a German league player, plus one of the world's top ten most expensive transfers.
Over to athletics now, and good news for the Czech Republic. In just under a week, world champion and three-time Olympic gold medalist Jan Zelezny has added two more javelin titles to his already vast collection. In the Goodwill Games on Thursday, Zelezny took the title with a throw of 87.52 metres, followed up on Sunday at the IAAF Grand Prix in Melbourne with a throw of 88.98 metres.
World champion decathlon athlete Tomas Dvorak also had cause to celebrate at the Goodwill Games, coming first with 8514 points, almost 100 points clear of runner-up Erik Nool of Estonia.
