During the first half of the program, he was accompanied by Vichnar, who for many years was the voice of Czech figure skating during live television broadcasts. In Březin’s era, however, he no longer commented, which is why Březin experienced a lot when Vichnar spoke his medallion. “I never had the honor of being commented by Mr. Vichnar. His last Olympics, which he commented on in figure skating, was Turin. I haven’t been there yet. It was a great honor for me that he narrated the video to me. I got a little emotional there. Then I tried to enjoy the skating,” he said.
His performance was the highlight of the second half of the program. The first belonged primarily to Czech figure skating hopefuls. Talented competitors from student champions to junior world champions Kateřina and Daniel Mrázkova performed.
Photo: Petr Sznapka, CTK
Former figure skater Michal Březina at a farewell party in Ostrava.
The former European medalist in the Hotár women’s sports pairs category had several roles. He appeared as an emcee, doused the Czech champion Petr Kotlařík with water during his performance, did somersaults with ice acrobat Philippe Warren, and as a coach brought the reigning European vice-champions Rebecca Ghilardiová and Filippo Ambrosini. In addition, he is very close to Březin, even though he represented Italy in figure skating. They lived not far from each other in Brno, witnessed each other’s weddings, and their young daughters are friends.
They worked together to make sense of the composition of the participants. Therefore, Březin’s sister Eliška could not be absent, and the fourth woman of last year’s world championship, Mariah Bellová from the USA, also performed. “I spent the last six years of my career with her,” recalled Březina, who ended his career after last year’s Beijing Olympics.
He is now fully engaged in training, so he did not have much time to prepare for his performance. “I stand on my skates all day from half past seven until five, until six in the evening. Then I’m so tired of it that if I can go skate by myself, I don’t even want to,” said the thirty-three-year-old Březina. Even in Ostrava, where he had a camp together with his former coach Rafael Arutjunjan, he did not get to practice. “I drove here for about twenty minutes,” he smiled.
Photo: Petr Sznapka, CTK
Michal Březina, the bronze medalist from the European Figure Skating Championships 2013, said goodbye to his career in front of the home audience.
He performed the number accompanied by Japanese drums that accompanied him in the 2017/2018 Olympic season. “I remade it for the show, but it’s actually my old short program. I have to ride it next week in Japan for an exhibition. So it was such good training,” he noted.
Only the modestly filled Ostravar Arena saw it, but Březina was still satisfied with the atmosphere. He blamed the audience’s lack of interest mainly on the fact that, due to organizational reasons, tickets went on sale relatively late. “I think that if it had gone on sale around Christmas, the arena could easily have been sold out. I think there were mainly people from Ostrava and the surrounding area. If it had gone on sale earlier, people would have come from elsewhere as well,” he mused.
