Praha olympijská freezes olympic bid

The developer of the Prague Olympic bid, Praha olympijská, announced that the bid to host the Summer Olympics should be indefinitely postponed. The company's head, Tomáš Petera, said this was not a good time to move forward with the project.

"There are basically three substantial reasons that should make us freeze the project for now," he said. "First, the project does not have sufficient political support and it could become a target for some politicians during pre-election campaigning. Second, the public isn't behind the Prague bid at the moment. And, third, the overall economic crisis that also hit the Czech Republic makes it quite inappropriate to develop the bid. The environment is quite unstable," Petera explained.

Praha olympijská and the Czech Olympic Committee (ČOV) were jointly developing a bid for the 2020 Summer Games. This was despite the failure of Prague's bid for the 2016 Summer Games last summer, on which City Hall had spent some 70 million Kč.

Prague's first bid ended rather disappointingly after the Czech capital failed to make the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) short list last June. Out of seven candidate cities, Prague ranked sixth, just ahead of the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. The city's elimination from the 2016 Olympics bidding process was likely to bring about the closure of bid developer Praha olympijská. Surprisingly, Prague City Hall agreed last December to allocate another 25 million Kč for 2009, and also beefed up the company's budget this year by an additional 11 billion Kč. The move sparked controversy, and not all City Hall deputies voted for the subsidy.

Petera said Prague should freeze the project in order to bid for the games in the future. But ČOV Chairman Milan Jirásek quickly questioned Petera's competence to call for such a move.

"His opinion is completely irrelevant," Jirásek said. "It's not a good time to deal with this issue at all." Jirásek said the decision about whether to develop another bid should be made no earlier than in October, after the IOC announces the hosts of the 2016 Games. "If a European bidder wins, then the chance that the 2020 Games would be held in Europe again would be close to zero," Jirásek said.

Perhaps a preview

Critics of the Prague Olympic project say the country is not ready to organize the games. To back their position, they point at the economic failure of the World Skiing Championship in Liberec in February. That event ended in a financial fiasco. Not only did the government have to subsidize the championship with more than 2 billion Kč from the state budget, but organizers still owe money for accommodation and other services. The first lawsuits against the organizers were filed by some of the services providers in late May. Head of the organizing committee Kateřina Neumannová says there are debts worth millions of crowns. She says the debt will be cleared once the organizers receive contracted payments from the International Skiing Federation.

Hockey great ends career

As May ended so too did the 18-year NHL career of Czech hockey great Bobby Holík. "I'm done. I'm retiring," Holík said from his home in Wyoming. "I miss being with my family every day. I knew when the season ended, but I wanted to leave and get home first and not make a big deal of it. ? I was a player; now, I'm a husband and father."

The 38-year-old Holík started his career with the Hartford Whalers in 1990. The two-time All Star spent 11 seasons with the New Jersey Devils, two with Hartford, two with the New York Rangers and three with the Atlanta Thrashers. He tallied 326 goals and 421 assists over 1,314 career games and, after Jaromír Jágr, is the second most productive Czech player in NHL history.

Born in Jihlava, Holík is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He lives in Wyoming with wife Renee and 12-year-old daughter Hannah-Marie.

František Bouc can be reached at
fbouc@praguepost.com