I got three meters of fabric for my third place in the Olympics
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Alena Danišová (née Chadimová) was born on 22 November 1931 in Olomouc, but she and her parents lived in Kojetín. Her father, Vladimír, led her to sports from childhood; he was an active member of Sokol and directed her to gymnastics. After the Second World War, the family moved to Prague, where her father worked as a Sokol administrator at Tyrš House and also coached top gymnasts. Here, she began to devote herself fully to gymnastics and gradually took part in international competitions. Thanks to her talent, she was nominated to the women’s gymnastics team of the Czechoslovak national team. In 1952, she participated in the Summer Olympic Games in Helsinki, where she achieved great success with the gymnastics team, winning a bronze medal in the team event. Two years later, she achieved the same success at the World Championships, from which she also brought back bronze medals with the national team. In the mid-fifties, she was at her sporting peak. During her pregnancy, she didn’t compete for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and ended her active career a year later. From the sixties until the late eighties, she was active in performance gymnastics as a coach, and through this, she brought many young and promising gymnasts to the sport. At the time of filming (2024), she lived in Prague.
