Sports News

By Vladimir Tax

Yes, it's the sports now and we begin somewhat unusually with chess. The Russian chess master Garry Kasparov visited Prague from Thursday to Sunday last week. He won four out of eight games with four Czech grand masters, drew twice and lost one game. On Thursday, Kasparov was defeated by 23-year old Tomas Oral, but on Saturday, they exchanged roles. Kasparov chose an opening which he knew did not suit Oral's technique and the Czech master eventually yielded in the 36th move. Garry Kasparov started playing chess at the age of five. He became a grandmaster at seventeen and the youngest world champion ever in 1985 at the age of twenty-two.

Football now, and the UEFA Cup second round matches were not very fortunate for Czech teams. Slovan Liberec suffered a defeat from Celta Vigo 3-1. Amid heavy rain Celta struggled to play their quick passing game against the Czechs. Mostovoi opened the score with a well struck free kick after 34 minutes but Celta made little further headway and when defender Edu scored an own goal midway through the second half, it looked set to be a disappointing night for the Spanish side. The visitors piled forward in search of a second goal but Mostovoi came to the rescue, coming in from the right to put home a second after 75 minutes. The Russian international then capped a brilliant personal performance as he latched on to a neat through-ball, turned calmly and squeezed in to complete a hat-trick. Pribram was doing even worse as it was thrashed by PAOK Thessaloniki 6-1. At home though, Pribram got some satisfaction as they beat Drnovice 1-0 at the weekend. Here are the other weekend's Gambrinus League results in full:

Bohemians Prague	2	Hradec Kralove	2
Synot	1	Brno	2
Blsany	1	Teplice	3
Liberec	2	Slavia Prague	0
Opava	1	Jablonec	0
Sparta Prague	4	Ostrava	0
Olomouc	0	Viktoria Zizkov	2

Sparta Prague leads the table on 27 points, two points ahead of second Viktoria Zizkov, Bohemians Prague is third with 24 points.

Quickly to the ice hockey extraliga, with the 16th-round games being played over the weekend. Leaders Pardubice suffered an unexpected 4-1 defeat away to eighth-placed Ceske Budejovice. Zlin, currently ranked second, defeated Litvinov 5-2. Third placed Sparta Prague drew with 12th-ranked Havirov 2-2. Pardubice stays on top with 34 points, Zlin is not far behind with 31, equal with Sparta and Trinec. But it's still very early days.