Denk z Cortiny Vacek Patrik (2025)

This Czech-language book takes you to Cortina dAmpezzo in 1956, during the groundbreaking Winter Olympic Games. Through unique photographs and notes by photographer and cameraman Karel Novk, who accompanied the Czechoslovak Olympic delegation, it captures the atmosphere of the Games, which took place seventy years ago. The event was the first Olympic Games to be broadcast live to more than twenty countries, including an improvised pirate broadcast in Czechoslovakia. Spectators at the stadium and in front of television screens witnessed one of the greatest mishaps in the history of opening ceremonies, as well as performances that went down in history, including those of twenty-year-old Austrian downhill skier Toni Sailer, the first athlete to win all three Alpine events at a single Olympics. The book also explains why the word Cortina became synonymous with failure in Czechoslovakia for many years.