Well, one free weekend.
As usual during pre-covid times, after two qualification cups there was traditional World cup, hosted by Austrian town Lenzing. Casters that planned to be ranked in World Cup could not miss that competition. Zuzana moved there too as a part of Moravian-Silesian team and she fought for points to be higher in World cup ranking.
Each competition has its own specifications. For example there is similar model at Lenzing that we can see at Prague cup. Competitors are splitted into groups and each group starts at different event. And so the group including Zuzana started with spinning skish what did not make her happy. Based on result. 3 casts missed the target and she was loosing quite a lot of points. The weather condition was probably not good as lot of casters had problems with spinning skish, only Sven Kleen of Germany was able to hit all targets and get hundred points.
Fly skish was much better, there were 100 points results more time, 6 men and 1 junior - Jan Bombera jr. of Litovel. Also Zuzka got 100 points. The problem was that two biggest competitors got it too - team member Lucka and Alena from South Bohemia but casting under Austrian flag. Targets showed there would be a great fight for winning.
Zuzana fought like an Silesian eagle, as the only lady she could get 100 points at arenberg. Even no man could get it. Then fly distance started and Alena showed up there that Silesian ladies Zuzana and Lucka still would have to learn much how to cast. Alena had cast at least 5 meters further and became leader in pentathlon.
But this season the best event of Zuzana is spinning distance. Based on good advice from Alena, Zuzana put her cast much higher and it was best of ladies and better than casts of two thirds of men. But it was not good enough, Zuzana needed two more points. Lucka was the winner and Zuzana was the second. A pity... If Zuzana would cast at least 102 points on arenberg...
Even whole Czech team was quite magical, junior categories were won by siblings David and Luca from Kdyně, other medals won by Moravian-Silesian Jeňas, Tomáš and Anička.
No wonder that teams competition of two juniors in one team was won by duo David+Jeňas and the second places was won by Lucka+Anička. At ladies team of Zuzana and Lucka won.
The rest of the RT competitors mostly spent Saturday and Sunday in a completely different actions. The free weekend between competitions is used by most regional associations to organize the Zlatá Udice regional rounds. Everyone organizes them differently. For example, the West Bohemian Territorial Association this time organized its territorial round not far from the town of Domažlice. On Saturday morning, the first round of floating fishing took place at the U tří vrb pond near the Týnské suburb, but the second round was left until Sunday.
Around half past four on Saturday afternoon, the competition in castingsport slowly started on the football field of the village of Luženice. The first event was "get to the playground", because the sewers were being dug in the village, so it was necessary to turn in Luženičky and get to the playground from the north through the forest. Then the other events could also take place. Similar to other regional associations, not everyone did cast fly events, so it was possible to cast four events at the same time quite quickly, and in two or three hours it was possible to start with the last event - spinning distance.
For new teams that do not train the fly events World champion, Kateřina from Kdyně could demonstrate the technique of fly distance casting. In that event she was able to win and get gold medal in 2016.
The Moravian Angling Union did it in different way. Like other unions, it held the Fishing Knowledge section shortly after everyone arrived at camp so that no one had to deal with it on Saturday when everyone would be tired from fishing, but both rounds of fishing section was held on Saturday. And it left the Castingsport section completely for Sunday.
Jihlava had one hope there. One of the participants of the Zlatá udice regional round, Honza, decided to try the association round as well. It must be said that it was not as easy as the regional round, because the union round is a simulation of the National round, so it is run according to different rules. For example, the questions for the test are selected from about 280 possible questions from the areas of natural science knowledge, knowledge of pond farming, the Act on Fisheries, the fishing rules of the Czech Republic, rules of castingsport or rules of floating fishing, adapted to the needs of the Zlatá udice. Also, fishing does not allow any technique other than floating fishing, and Castingsport adds fly fishing to the plug events.
Honza started with sixth place in fishing knowledge. 18 questions were not correct and missing know-how appeared in cognition, especially in animals. However, it was not far from fourth place. On Saturday, fishing with a fishing rod started and here Honza was not very lucky, in the first round he only caught a few fish and in the second round, when he hooked a very large carp, something in his head jumped while tackling the almost caught fish and it ran towards the pier, where it hit . Unfortunately, at that moment the hook came loose and the carp was gone. Even so, Honza caught two other carps and ended up in 9th place.
On Sunday, castingsport was waiting for him, which he mainly deals with.
Honza didn't start badly, the fly skish 50 points with unnecessary 4 zeroes showed that we are growing in this event and we could be ready for the upcoming Czech Junior and Boys Championship. Then he did magic on the arenberg, beating his previous record by 6 points. He performed similarly on the skish as he missed just three times and beat his personal best on yellow targets by 10 points.
The distances did not work out. With the aim of beating Matěj from Kroměříž, Honza was not able to concentrate on technique and rather fought with strength, thinking that he would be able to cast further. Even if he did cast something, it wasn't what he expected, and especially he lost points to Matěj. In addition, he did cast the first spinning cast a few centimeters away from the cutoff, and the judges were very careful. On the second cast, he made a typical mistake of a competitor who hesitates. He stopped before the cast, so the cast went outside the sector for the second time. There was no place for risk, and the third cast was a securing one, this time exactly in the center of the sector.
Although he wasn't happy with himself, the goulash soup and steak in his stomach lifted his mood. Thanks to this, he understood better that although he finished in second place, he improved his personal record in the pentathlon by 8 points. Thanks to the second place in the castingsport, he placed fourth and was nominated for the representative team, which should go to the National Round of the Zlatá udice.
The other members of the team spent their time in different ways. For example, the children could enjoy their parents after a long time over the whole weekend and went crazy at home or go on a trip.
I mean, not everyone... For example, Adam was helping his father with the pool, but he couldn't resist anyway, and when he found out that there would be a multi event at the Junior and Boys' Republic, he pulled out a rod from the corner and started preparing for the competition.
And Karel thought that he would finally go fishing. If there was one free weekend that he could devote himself to, he would go fishing.
And in the end it turned out differently. On Saturday morning, he drove to the Milan Janus Memorial to see how young fly fishermen compete on Volyňka, a short distance below Strakonice, he watched the catching of small brook trout or 35 centimeter grayling, he looked at the way of the competition mode, where one angler catches and the other acts as a referee, while he is still preparing his rods, and asked the fathers of the competitors for information about competitions and fly fishing.
And then he changed his mind about fishing and went to help Honza on Zlatá udice instead of going fly fish.