“That was perhaps what really attracted me to it, that we camped... of course, at that time there were no hotels, so it was... actually a life in nature.”
Former kayaker Mária Potočná, née Máleková, was born on November 1, 1954 in Bratislava. The parents, Štefánia and Tomáš Málek, had two other children, Alžbeta and Tomáš, in addition to the eldest Mária. Mária and her siblings grew up in Bratislava’s Klinger colony, among prefab houses, near the gravel pit. Štefánia worked at the computing center in Slovnafta and Tomáš as a mathematics and descriptive teacher. She liked to train on the handball court, or just passively watch the athletes through the windows of the racing club. Basically, sport was present in Maria’s life from early childhood. Mária started attending the nine-year elementary school on Košická Street in Bratislava in 1961, with the fact that she went to Novohradská Street for the first year. At first, Mária was interested in a different kind of sport, but when she saw the variety of water slalom, which her sister Alžbeta was the first to sign up for, she decided to change. As teenagers, they became part of the rowing club in Karlová Ves. They started on the Danube River, where the current was mostly strong and Mária could hardly turn around. It was challenging, but also a lot of fun. At first, Mária trained three to four times a week, but during the holidays she was at the shipyard in Karlová Ves, literally every day. In addition to the fact that Mária was already actively engaged in canoeing, she also attended the Gymnasium on Novohradská street in Bratislava. She was a student in a mathematics-physics class where there were five girls and thirty boys. In 1974, after finishing high school, Mária applied to the Faculty of Natural Sciences, majoring in mathematics and computer science. Only after arriving at the admissions interviews did she learn that she had probably unwittingly applied to the newly opened department, theoretical cybernetics. Mária finally successfully graduated from university in 1979, but canoeing was still a priority for her. Her first job was a position at the university, at the computer center where she studied. Later, from 1996, she started working in the Datacenter in the education department, which she left in 2001, due to an offer from the Allianz Slovak insurance company, where she worked for eleven long years, until her retirement. Competitions took place constantly, with Mária competing in three performance classes. In 1973, she managed to reach the first performance class, which for her at that time meant a peak. After that, Mária competed more or less around Slovakia and decided that at the age of 19 she would take a coaching course, after which she immediately started coaching a group of girls under the age of fourteen. He continues to train to this day. In addition to being a coach, she is also a member of the Slávia UK Danube Boat Club in Bratislava. As for her private life, Mária married her coach at the time, Vojtech Potočný, with whom she has four sons, Vojtech, Martin, Marián and Marcel. Marcel Potočný, the youngest, was the most successful in water slalom, as he worked as a coach in China and was part of the Hungarian national team for a long time.
