Prague, Sept 11 (CTK) – Czech gymnast and seven-time Olympic winner Vera Caslavska, who died on August 30 at the age of 74, was buried on Thursday in a close family circle and sport officials and her friends will pay tribute to her in Prague’s National Theatre on Monday morning, the organisers have said.
The one-hour ceremony will be broadcast live by public Czech Television and moderated by Marek Eben.
Caslavska’s family previously rejected the offer to organise a state funeral, and wished that only an official farewell ceremony take place in National Theatre.
The programme will include extracts from a ballet and a drama performance, a montage of the documentary film “Vera 68” on her directed by Olga Sommerova and personal testimonies of present and past athletes and other people who played an important role in the life of Caslavska.
The bells of St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castles, the royal and presidential seat, will ring at the end of the ceremony.
Th event will be attended by a number of renowned guests, such as Japanese Shigeo Okinaka, former representative of the Czech Tourism in Japan, who gave a samurai sword to Caslavska for her great performance at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and Slovak Olympic Committee chairman Frantisek Chmelar.
The event will not be open to the public, but since Friday, people have been able to lay flowers, lit candles and sign the books of condolences at the piazetta outside the National Theatre. They can also watch a live transmission of the Monday programme on a big screen there.
President Milos Zeman will send a wreath but he will not attend the Monday ceremony, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said.
Some ministers will be present and the government will therefore postpone its regular meeting until Monday afternoon.
The funeral of Caslavska, who died after a long, serious illness, took place in the crematorium in Sumperk, north Moravia, before the sunset on Thursday, September 8. The prayer and blessing was read by a local Catholic priest outside the church in the nearby village of Bela pod Pradedem-Domasov.
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