They did not lose to Slovakia at that time. And the world championships in St. Petersburg Petersburg confirms this. Josef Augusta’s team beat its eastern neighbors both in the group and 23 years ago May 14, 2000 in the final, but in the end got an unexpected dramatic plot.

Since the Olympic Games in Lillehammer 1994, the Czechs have won seventeen times out of 21 matches against Slovakia in major tournaments, drawing once and only three times the opponents celebrated. However, that has not happened at the World Cup in Russia.

The Augusta coach certainly hoped for a bigger influx of reinforcements from the NHL, but in the end he had to settle for the quartet of Petr Buzek, František Kaberle, Václav Prospal and Václav Varaďa. “We are certainly not tired after this season,” commented Jiří Dopita scathingly on the reluctance of overseas players to travel to Russia. They don’t know what they are missing.

The Czech Republic beat Canada 2:1 in the semifinals thanks to Robert Reichl’s lucky blow, and before the fight for gold, he was also given the role of favorite in the first reciprocal duel against Slovakia, which ended with an emphatic score. from 6:2. In addition, the opponents led by Zdeno Chára and Miroslav Šatan looked very nervous at the start of the final round.

“The Czechs punished our every mistake,” said Slovak television commentator Stanislav Pavlík in despair. Explosion! Explosion! Explosion! Thanks to Michal Sýkora, Tomáš Vlasák and Martin Procházka, the score was already 3:0 in the 13th minute. Štrbák reduced the score, but at the start of the third period, Jan Tomajko made the score 4:1 and it looked like the match was over. Error!

The team led by Ján Filec ultimately went berserk. At 57:38 Šatan defeated Roman Čechmánek and reduced the score to 3:4. Luckily, Prospal turned down a play with Robert Reichl that made the final score 5:3 for the scattered defense.

“The best thing is how everything happens to a person,” recalled defender František Kučera with a cigar in his hand in the dressing room and his teammate on the shoulder tapped by the then head of the Chamber of Deputies, Václav Klaus.

At the same time, Russia’s domestic players simply painted a golden scenario before the World Cup, building a new Peter the Great arena for the event and forming a star team with Pavel Bur, Sergej Gončar and Alexei Yašin. However, it fell apart under the hands of coach Alexander Jakušev.

Despite the obvious sound of the task, Russia was defeated by almost everyone who passed. America, Switzerland, Latvia, Belarus…On Victory Day alone, the home team beat Sweden, but they obviously couldn’t avoid national embarrassment. “On behalf of the entire team, I want to apologize to the country for what we did here. It must have been a bad moment for the fans,” said a devastated Jakušev.

Czech hockey players were welcomed home by crowds of fans in the packed Old Town Square. There were times when the Augusta coach practically did not change his winning jersey during the championship.