MICHAL BŘEZINA The FINAL HURRAH
The career of Czech star Michal Březina began at a small junior competition in Slovakia in 2003, but it will likely end on the biggest stage of them all at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China.
At age 31, the Brno native hopes to close out an 18-year career with strong performances at all his competitions next season and leave the sport on a high note. But whatever happens, Březina’s main desire is to feel a sense of personal satisfaction as he takes his final bow.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic playing havoc with the skating schedule on both the domestic and international levels, Michal Březina found a lot of positives in the change of pace over the past 14 months.
With limited competitions on the skating calendar in the fall of 2020, Březina was looking forward to the only Grand Prix he was scheduled to contest — Skate America in late October — but just weeks prior to the event he suffered an injury during a training session, which forced him to subsequently withdraw. “I was doing a run-through and as I went into a triple Axel, my blade got caught in a rut that someone had caused going into a Salchow or loop — some edge jump — and my foot got stuck,” the Czech star explained.
“I still went into the jump but I ended up with my feet above my head and I landed on my back. I went to the doctor who told me it was basically just a bruise. I had an X-ray and an MRI and they did not show anything, but the doctor told me I should take a couple of days off to give my back a little bit of a rest.
“I am not the youngest one in this game anymore, and the doctor wanted to make sure that I was not going to get reinjured by pushing it too early. So I could not really do anything for a day or two. After that, I was allowed to skate but I could not do any jumps for two weeks. That happened a few weeks before Skate America, so I had one week to get ready for that competition. My coach, Rafael Arutyunyan, said it would not be a big deal if we did not go. He just wanted me to be healthy. So we decided to scratch it. I was still in OK shape, but Rafael did not want to go to a competition just in
