The pressure for performance from the regime was enormous
Stáhnout obrázek
Jindřich Panský was born on July 29, 1960 in Pilsen to parents Jiří and Jindřiška Panský. He grew up as the youngest of three brothers. He took up table tennis at the age of five and joined the Lokomotiva Plzeň sports club at the age of nine. His mother, as a member of Sokol, first tried to introduce her youngest son to gymnastics or music, but he was more interested in ping-pong. At the age of sixteen, he made the Czechoslovak national team and subsequently transferred to the Slavia Vysoká škola team. His first big success came in 1978 when he won the European Junior Championship. The big successes in his career came in the early 1980s, when he won several medals at the World Championships in team competition. His greatest success, however, came in the mid-1980s when he became European Vice-Champion in mixed doubles with Maria Hrachova in 1984. The following year he and Milan Orlowski made it to the men‘s doubles final at the World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, but lost to the home pair in the final. He achieved the same success in the mixed doubles with Maria Hrachova. In 1986, he followed up his European Championship final success and became European mixed doubles champion with Maria Hrachová. He was the only male representative to participate in the premiere of table tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. In mid-1989 he took advantage of a legal offer to play abroad and went to Germany. He played there until 2013 before embarking on a full coaching career. In his role as a coach, he managed to win several championship titles in the Czech table tennis league. At the time of filming (2025) he was living in Prague.
