14. May 2020  
Prague, CZE  
Artistic Gymnastics

Czech Coach Miroslav ZITKO passed away ...

At the age of 93 in our neighboring country, the Czech Republic, Miroslav ZITKO, one of the best-known and most successful coaches and officials in modern gymnastics, died, who also left his pedagogical footprints in northern Germany. In his homeland, he was something like the nestor of the once glorious Czechoslovak gymnasts who, with celebrities like Vera Růžičková or legend Vera Caslavska, had laid a real gold trail in the 1960s. He was one of the longest-standing gymnastics coaches at the army sports club ATK, the predecessor club of Spartak Prague, where he had trained together with internationally renowned athletes such as Alois HUDEC and Zdenek RŮŽIČKA since the late 1940s ...!
He also made great contributions to the Sokol Sports Association and was one of the most recognized methodologists of modern gymnastics and was active in Mlada Boleslav until the age of 80 until 2006.
During the "Prague Spring", Miroslav ZITKO also worked in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1970, as a regional coach in Schleswig-Holstein, and also left impressive traces of his qualified work there, as our German employee Klaus Deneke recalls on our German speaking ►► GYMmedia-Website www.gymmedia.de

Miroslav ZITKO (CSR) 1968 in Kiel / GER with Vera Caslavska, Yukio Endo and Italy's Franco Menichelli at a press & media festival ...