“I stopped rowing at the top, but I still moved. I switched from Dukla to ČVK Praha to maintain myself. A lot of people started circling around me, gnawing at me. My girlfriend at home also said that I was still young, so that I wouldn’t regret it later in life . I tried it and it started to go well. Step by step, I’m trying to get back among the elite in the Czech Republic,” said Helešic after today’s triumph at Primátorky, where he was the coxswain of Dukla’s main crew.
He quit years ago also because rowing stopped fulfilling him. At the same time, he had already started at the Olympic Games in Rio 2016, together with Jakub Podrazel, they won the World Cup. The atmosphere at last year’s World Championships in Račice, which he watched as a spectator, also encouraged him to return to top sport.
Photo: Detlev Seyb
Lukáš Helešič (front) with Václav Baldrián at the European Championships in Bled.
“Last year in October, November, I returned to two-phase training and the body remembered,” Helešic said. In the spring, he formed a crew with Valerian, who, like him, became a junior world champion. Helešic in 2014, Valerian four years later. “The first races in Bled didn’t go very well for us, so we have a lot to fix,” he pointed to the failed European Championship in May.
But Helešic does not make a tragedy out of it. “Here we improved our appetite and psyche a bit, for which I am very happy. After all, we have been rowing together for three months,” said Helešic, who is happy that he can train in Dukla in Michal Vabroušek’s group together with the best Czech crew Miroslav Vraštil, Jiří Šimánek .
The program for the next months is clear, prepare well for the third race of the World Cup in Lucerne and then succeed at the World Championships, which will also be a qualification for the Olympics. “That was my idea why I came back. The Olympics. I’m not interested in anything else,” Helešic admitted. To advance to Paris, he and his partner must finish in eleventh place.
Although Helešic has returned to rowing, he continues to work as a real estate broker. “Rowing is now a free sport for me. I have to do well in several areas,” he remarked with a smile. He therefore combines training with work. “What will it look like on Monday? In the morning I go to training, change and go to the office. I already have some meetings planned,” he added.
