Olympic champion Eva Samkova is thriving despite 'learning to live' with tragedy
The Czech snowboard cross Olympic gold medallist is arguably in the best form of her life, despite losing both her mother and father in this Games cycle.
Snowboard
Eva Samkova's snowboarding success story is one of talent and resilience.
The Vrchlabi native won the Czech Republic's first gold medal of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in snowboard cross, then doubled down with a spectacular bronze at PyeongChang 2018, riding from sixth to third in the final.
The 2019 world champ picked up her third Crystal Globe last season, proving she's still at the top of her game heading into this Olympic season, and did it all with her trademark smile and paint-on moustache.
From the outside, things certainly look pretty sweet for Samkova. But away from the snow, her life has been touched by tragedy.
Since the last Winter Olympic Games, she has lost both her parents, her father in 2018 and her mother in 2020.
"I will never deal with the death of my parents. I'm learning to live with it," she told Czech site idnes.cz in February 2021.
Eva Samkova: Sochi Olympics changed me life forever
Ahead of the 2021/22 season, the Czech snowboard cross queen spoke to FIS and revealed, unsurprisingly, that her Olympic victory in Russia was her sporting highlight to date.
"For sure the first gold medal in Sochi, I was very young – that’s a super special one and it really changed my life for ever, I guess. I mean, I was super young and I didn’t realise how much of a big deal it was, not only to me, but also to others.
"And the bronze medal (at PyeongChang 2018) was a totally different thing, it was really hard for me emotionally, especially a few days before the race and the big final... was super hard on a huge and very challenging course.
"For me, the bronze medal from PyeongChang had a taste of the gold, because I was lost all the time in the heat of the Big Final and so I was really happy that I pushed from sixth to third and won the bronze medal."
The 2018 season was emotional for her because of her father Roman's illness and sudden death.
"Life tells me different stories and tests my resilience. It was Dad who taught me and my mother to fight, not to give up, and to believe that the path I had chosen was the right one. I won for him. " Eva Samkova to FIS after winning the overall World Cup in 2020.
The making of an Olympic champion
Samkova's father was the one who introduced her to snowboarding, and was eternally supportive of his daughter's dreams. Their relationship was more like that of best friends, and she even called him by his first name.
But her mother, Ludmila, was a great guiding force in her life too. It was thanks to her that Eva grew up in the snowy mountains of Vrchlabi.
"Neither my father nor my mother come from the mountains, but when my mother was young, she decided that she wanted to ski and live in the mountains and found a job in the Vrchlabi hospital, so I was born under the mountains," Eva explained to Czech portal tn.nova.cz.
But they never pressured her into the sport. Instead, they offered her their time and resources - two key components she needed to get to the top of her sport.
"I was lucky my parents were never ambitious. They didn't try to heal me from their unfulfilled dreams," she continued.
When Roman died, Ludmila worried about Eva, saying "I'm a nurse, so I can see her broken, broken forever."
The Eva Samkova - Michela Moioli show
But after a period that included the further heartbreak of losing her mother too, Samkova's spirit was far from broken.
Her battle for top spot in the World Cup standings, with her great rival Michela Moioli, was the proof.
In fact, the Samkova-Moioli rivalry is one of the greatest ever rivalries in snowboard cross. Moioli is reigning Olympic champion, but Samkova held off the Italian to win the most recent Crystal Globe.
"Michela is one of my favourite ones (rivals)," Samkova told FIS. "It is always such a tough battle with her. But I think that now we top eight or top 10 girls have to always fight super hard. And it’s not as it used to be a couple of years back that if one girl gets in front, she stays there. Now even the Small Final is a huge fight until the very end.
"So, I like to fight - and I mean in a good way - Michela, also the French girls, Faye Gulini – she is super hard to fight against - and also Belle Brockhoff, she is super strong!
"And as to the question “Why” – you know, some girls have the best jumps, others the best turns, then there are some with a really strong technique or great tactics and it’s fun to try to keep up with them and sometimes they surprise you with their moves during the race. So, that’s really cool!"
Samkova's unorthodox training camps before Beijing 2022
Despite cancelled training camps in South America and New Zealand, Samkova's coach Marek Jelinek believes his charge is in great shape.
"It's been a bit of a nightmare, because there is no track anywhere until the end of August," he told idnes.cz.
"We trained in a snow park in France, then went to Italy, we started training on the track at the end of August."
Many sessions were cancelled due to coronavirus and other factors, but training on different tracks has had positive results too. And Jelinek thinks Samkova has had excellent preparation for this Olympic season.
"We originally had Australia agreed, but that didn't work out because no one wanted to be quarantined for a month. We replaced it with France, Switzerland, Italy. Bit by bit, we managed to do the training... And I have to say, it was one of the best preparations I've ever had. I am very happy with it," the coach beamed.
Mentally, 2014 Olympic champion Samkova is ready to fight her way back onto the podium in Beijing.
"I consider myself a fighter, I'm not going to Beijing just to attend. I will try to place in the top three, when it comes out, I will be excited," - Eva Samkova
Samkova is not unrealistic about the size of the task that lies ahead.
To return to the top of an Olympic podium would require a near faultless performance. But it is a challenge she has never felt better-equipped to take on.
"It will be even harder to achieve than in PyeongChang and definitely much, much harder than it was in Sochi," she said.
"In PyeongChang I tried to not put pressure on myself. I tried to distress myself and kept telling myself that it was a normal race, like any other one. But that didn’t work out so well and one day before the finals I had to kind of rethink everything and push myself to be wanting to win the Olympics.
"In Beijing, I hope I will be a little more chill as for the mental side, because I hope to be more used to being under the stress now."