The races in Hyeres, France were aptly called the Last Chance Regatta. From there alone, the road led to Paris, that is, to Marseilles, where the yachting competitions will take place. And Tkadlecová and Burská took their chance, just like Kateřina Švíková in the IQFoil windsurfing class, they were sure of advancing even before the final heats.
The now twenty-four-year-old Tkadlecová already fought for the games in Tokyo with coxswain Dominika Vaďurová, originally from Slovakia. At that time, the Olympic dream did not come true, so two years ago she got together with Burska, a girl with Polish roots who was a year younger.
“My parents are from Poland, but I was born in Prague. I have dual citizenship, I speak both languages, I also competed for Poland for two years and learned a lot there,” she says. And she had to learn very quickly even at the beginning of the new collaboration, however, the young girls were originally aiming for the next Olympics in Los Angeles 2028.
“Sára was with her previous partner for six years, they were totally close, I had no experience with the 49er. So Sára also had to take on the role of trainer, when she did her work on the orca and also taught me individual steps. I felt a lot of pressure that I didn’t want to disappoint Sára, and I had to work hard,” explains Burska.
At first glance, their discipline is acrobatics on a boat. To drive in the right direction at the highest possible speed, a perfect interplay is needed. “We’re both standing or hanging on the crossbar, if we don’t cooperate, the boat won’t work,” describes Tkadlecová.
Photo: Czech Yachting Association
Zosia Burska and Sára Tkadlecová on their boat.
“It is one of the few ships where as the helmsman I hold the helm, but not the mainsail, Sára controls it. And the basic rule in yachting is that the movement of the rudder should be accompanied by the movement of the sail, so we communicate non-stop,” adds her colleague. He also spends a lot of time in the gym to get physically fit for the races.
They can do that at home in the Czech Republic, but you can’t train at their level here on a ship. Perhaps only at their very beginnings at the Nechranice Dam. Now they have a training base in Zadar, Croatia, where their coach Karlo Karpejlevič is from.
“Otherwise, we typically train where there will be other races. We spend 180 to 200 days a year abroad,” says Tkadlecová, a student at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the UK. “And in our class, we will be the only country without access to the sea at the Olympics,” proudly adds Burska, who studies at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports.
