Zdena Blaskova: University of Ostrava, CZECH REPUB

- Could you present yourself in few sentences?

My name is Zdena Blaskova, I’m 22 years old, I study at the university of Ostrava and I play table tennis! In Czech national team, in the senior ranking, I’m second and in the world ranking I’m about 300 right now because I don’t play tournaments. And I play the highest league in Czech.

- For how many times did you play table tennis? And why did you choose this game and not a more girly one?

It’s for 15 years already and I choose it because my father played and also my two sisters and I wanted to be better than them and I succeed! I enjoy the game, I really like it, it’s a really hard sport and most of the person around the world don’t think about this.

- About that, in most sports we say that girls are not well represented, do you think that it’s the same for table tennis? Is there a good equality?

For sure I think that we are not represented that much like boys. For example, in Czech, this highest league of men is always on the title with photos on Instagram and the girls are more like one time per months. Girls should be more represented for sure.

- Does It represent something for you to receive your sport competition in your own country? How do you feel about that?

I think it’s good but for me this tournament was not represented enough in the social media so most of the people doesn’t know that here is the competition. It’s also a pity for us to not have our national men team, they are in another championship. But it’s good that it’s in Olomouc, everything is well planned.

- You’ve made a good course in this championship, you finished third, what did you learn about this experience?

I was a little bit sad because we lost the match which was so close but I’ve met very nice girls in my team, we had a good team spirit.

- To know that you had the bronze in team, those it gives you more motivation to reach others medals?

Last year we were first in team so I’m a little bit disappointed but we had another girl in our team in position three before but she’s not with us anymore so it was a bit different, but my team is very good! For singles of course I want to win a medal and also in doubles but we will see what will happen, I don’t want to say too much.