Thursday July 22, 2021
“Scandalous” and “amateurish”
Corona outbreak in the Czech Olympic team
The cases are increasing: six members of the Czech Olympic delegation have already been infected with the corona virus on the way to Tokyo. How it came to be needs to be clarified as a matter of urgency. Some travelers may have neglected their duties.
“Scandalous” and “amateurish”: the Czech Olympic delegation already has six corona cases to complain about and now wants to get to the bottom of the cause of this accumulation with an investigation. After the beach volleyball player Marketa Nausch-Slukova had been confirmed that she was out of the Olympics because of a positive test result, the Czech National Olympic Committee also made the infection of cyclist Michal Schlegel public. Both had come to Tokyo on the same flight as the four previously infected members of the team.
Nausch-Slukova and her partner Barbora Hermannova would have been the last group opponent of Olympic champions Laura Ludwig and Margareta Kozuch next Wednesday. The effects of the elimination on the Group F game schedule are not yet clear. Prime Minister Andrej Babis also intervened. He said the events were “scandalous, I don’t like that at all. I don’t understand how this could happen.”
The NOK now wants to check what happened before, during and after the delegation’s charter flight from Prague to Tokyo last week. The investigation aims to clarify “whether some travelers have neglected their duties. We are fully aware of the grave situation.” The findings are to be announced within the next 14 days.
Nausch-Slukova is the wife of trainer Simon Nausch, who also tested positive. In addition to Schlegel, the virus was also found in beach volleyball player Ondrej Perusic, table tennis player Pavel Sirucek and team doctor Vlastimil Voracek. Nausch-Slukova’s management sees the failures in the organizers of the journey. “The incredibly underestimated logistics are amateurish,” said the agency: “It is a failure of the person responsible for the charter flight, not a failure of the people on board.”
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