Věra 68

Gymnast Věra Čáslavská is the most successful Czech sportswoman of all time. After the stirring victory at the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968 she was declared the best sportswoman in the world and the planet's second most popular woman and the world was at her feet. That same year she signed the Two Thousand Words manifesto and never withdrew her signature. The height of her career was followed by a sharp fall at the beginning of normalisation and then a rapid rise to the top again twenty years later when President Václav Havel chose her as his advisor. A couple of years later removed herself from the public eye due to a family tragedy. It took sixteen years for her to return to public life. This year she is celebrating her seventieth birthday. The fate of Věra Čáslavská is also a mirror of Czechoslovak history and a unique phenomenon in the histo (texte officiel du distributeur)