Prague, Jan 10 (CTK) – Dominik Lakatos, 18, is the first Romany playing in the Czech national ice-hockey team, so far only the junior one, and he scored points at the World Junior Ice Hockey Championship last year, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes in its Saturday issue.
Apart from the under-21 team, Lakatos plays in the Elite League Liberec (north Bohemia) club, the paper adds.
Dominik’s father, who is a Romany, brought him to a preparatory hockey course in Kolin, central Bohemia, where they lived, when the boy was under three years only. However, first he had to pass “a test:”
“My parents put a football and a hockey stick before me, and I immediately grasped the stick. I loved sport, but hockey has always been number one for me,” he told the daily.
His talent for hockey was apparent from the very beginning. He learnt skating excellently soon and a few years later he joined the schoolboys’ team in Kolin.
“Dominik made such progress that in one and a half years, he was among the best players in his category in the country,” Petr Martinek, the then coach of his team, told the paper.
The fact that his father was Romany played no role at the beginning of his hockey career, MfD says.
“We naturally knew that he was a Romany boy, I knew his father, who is a great man, by the way. Both parents supported the son as much as they could, they never missed any game. We were pushing for all to be equal in the hockey dressing room,” Martinek said.
However, Dominik admits that some schoolmates reminded him of his origin, calling him “gipsy,” probably because they envied him his sport success. He said he minded their insults mainly because of his father.
“No one knew what my dad had experienced, what he had given up to enable me to play hockey and live a normal live,” Dominik said.
The father’s parents died soon after he married his mother, who is of Czech ethnicity, and he almost stopped meeting his siblings. This is why Dominik did not grew up in a Romany environment and had no Romany friends. The parents worked hard, saving money so that he could play hockey, which was a quite expensive hobby, MfD writes.
His current coach in the junior team, Filip Pesan, points out that Dominik had disciplinary problems a few years ago as a teenager. He misbehaved and violated the club’ rules and this is why he was even conditionally expelled from it.
However, many young hockey players, who leave their families and live in a hostel or dormitory in a big town with a lot of temptation, face similar problems, Pesan says, adding that Dominik has calmed down in the meantime.
He has also finished his studies at an apprentice school and got trained in mechanical engineering, MfD says.
It writes that Dominik may have inherited his talent from his mother’s father who played hockey in a local club, but the successful grandson has higher ambitions.
His dream is not only to join the national adult team, but also to play in NHL, in particular in Los Angeles.
“I admire Los Angeles as a modern, beautiful city and naturally also the Los Angeles Kings club, their way of play. I would very much like to play there once,” Dominik told MfD.
