Czechoslovakia at the 1956 Summer Olympics

Czechoslovakia competed at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. 63 competitors, 51 men and 12 women, took part in 54 events in 10 sports.

Contents

• Athletics
• Cycling
• Modern pentathlon
• Shooting
• References

Czech athlete Olga Fikotová won a gold medal in women's discus. She also started a famous love affair with American athlete Harold Vincent Connolly here.

The team was warned that their flight back to Czechoslovakia was in a danger of a terrorists' attack. All sportsmen had to undergo a long journey by a Soviet ship Gruzia from Melbourne to Vladivostok, Soviet Union and then by Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow and by plane to Prague, Czechoslovakia. The whole journey took 31 days. The part of the journey from Melbourne to Moscow, Czechoslovakian sportsmen had to share a ship and train with Soviet sportsmen also returning home via this route. The coexistence was not idyllic and Czechoslovakians described it later as very humiliating. The Olympic team spent Christmas Day in the Pacific and New Year's Eve in Siberia. The team experienced high temperatures during voyage across equator and later freezing weather with -50 °C in Siberia.

It is very probable that the reason for the warning was only fictional and a long journey home was only a political decision made by Czechoslovak and Soviet communists. It was never justified.