Czechoslovak Olympic legend Věra Čáslavská passed away aged 74 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on Tuesday. She represented Czechoslovakia in gymnastics, was a seven time Olympic winner, four time world champion and multiple-time European champion. "Věra was a fighter. She was diagnosed last year in the spring... When she did not come with us to Rio it was clear the situation was bad," President of the Czech Olympic Committee Jiří Kejval said to Reuters. Aside from other successes, Čáslavská won Olympic gold medals in individual all-round gymnastics events at the 1964 and 1968 games, thus joining Soviet Larisa Latynina who is the only other female athlete to win back-to-back gold medals in these events.
Čáslavská was also a vocal critic of the 1968 invasion of the armies of the Warsaw Pact conducted by the Soviet Union into Czechoslovakia. The arrival of soldiers was in reaction to the process of democratising the communist regime; the so-called Prague Spring. Čáslavská signed an appeal named '2,000 words', which reflected the ideas behind the Prague Spring. She refused to withdraw her signature and subsequently she was deprived of the right to travel abroad and participate in public sport events both in Czechoslovakia and abroad and was forced to retire at the age of 26. Later in her life, she was allowed to leave to work as a coach in Mexico, but reportedly only when the Mexican government threatened to cease oil exports to Czechoslovakia. In the late 1980s she was allowed to work as a coach and judge in her home country after the pressure from Juan Antonino Smaranch, the then president of the International Olympic Committee.
