The city is saving Smíchov hockey! Prague will provide the “five” with land as a replacement for the legendary Nikolajka
photo: Jakub Mračno, PrahaIN.cz (like others)/Minor hockey players of HC Smíchov during a protest match in front of the municipality building.
The representatives heard the parents of young hockey players from HC Smíchov, who came to protest in front of the Prague municipality building on the day of the last meeting of Prague representatives before the municipal elections. It paid off. Little hockey players should get new ice in Jinonice. It should replace the closed winter stadium on Nikolajka.
“One of the cutest demonstrations I’ve ever seen is going on in front of the city hall. I’m rooting for you, there will be ice,” he said through a social network and personally during the last meeting of the Prague council in this election period, Deputy Mayor Petr Hlaváček (STAN).
Cute demonstration
It was a reaction to the protest of parents and children from the hockey club HC Smíchov, who brought goals, equipment and went to play hockey right on the pavement in front of the New Town Hall building on Mariánské náměstí. The reason for the protest was the closure of the Nikolajka ice rink in Smíchov, where hockey players were supposed to train, and the threat that the ice surface in Prague 5 would end without replacement.
In front of the municipality building, they played for Smíchov ice.
In the end, the black scenario did not come true, as representatives of the capital approved the provision of land for a temporary winter stadium in Jinonice, Prague 5 district. The latter confirmed this in a press release available to PrahaIN.cz.
For saving the Smíchov ice
“Prague representatives listened to our pressure for an urgent solution to the situation with the closure of Nikolajka. The citizens’ petition to save winter sports in Prague 5 helped us a lot in this sense. I would like to thank first deputy mayor Mr. Hlaváček and representative Zajíček, who took the problem as their own and helped us find a solution,” said the mayor of Prague 5, Renáta Zajíčková (ODS), the wife of the aforementioned representative, who is currently number three on the TOGETHER candidate list for Prague.
According to deputy Hlaváček, the council’s decision is primarily due to the efforts of parents and young players of the HC Smíchov club, who after a “protest” hockey match in front of the municipality building moved to the hall where the councilors were meeting. With eloquent slogans such as: “300 sad little hockey players” or “don’t take sports away from the children of Prague 5”. they came to ask for a solution to the situation after the closure of the historic Nikolajka Stadium.
After playing hockey on the pavement in front of the town hall, the protesters moved to the hall where the representatives were meeting.
This was announced for this season by the owner of Nikolajka, the Niko Praha company, stating that the stadium itself is in a bad technical condition, and according to him, the original technologies are also very demanding, which is the main reason for the stadium’s closure due to rising energies.
The sport is to be preserved
There was also speculation that Nikolajka would disappear completely and investment apartments would be built in its place, but the owners reject this and claim that they want to preserve the sports function of the stadium on Nikolajka. They also rejected the claims of the Prague 5 City Hall, which presented itself as a rescue situation by offering to buy or lease the stadium. “No one from Prague 5 negotiated with us, and we did not receive a buyout offer from the town hall, nor did they offer us any help,” says Niko Praha in an official statement.
First the temporary building, then the stadium
Last week, representatives of the capital discussed a petition for the provision of municipal land for Prague 5’s plan to build a temporary sports field and subsequently a new stadium in cooperation with a private investor. According to earlier information from the ČTK agency, the negotiated investor is the Fermstav company represented by businessman Slavomír Pavlíček, who co-founded the game studio Bohemia Interactive.
According to the owners, the Nikolajka stadium under Mrázovka hill in Smíchov is in bad condition.
The Nikolajka Stadium itself has been in operation since 1961 and until now was the home ground for hockey teams, but also for figure skating representatives, today it is the home of the HC Smíchov hockey club and the Stadion Praha figure skating team. It is also now a legendary area for public skating, where both the junior and cross-country generation learned how to skate.
After Štvanice, Nikolajka is the oldest
After the closure and demolition of another legendary ice rink in Prague’s Štvanice, Nikolajka remained one of the few areas where public ice skating was available to the people of Prague, and it is also the oldest ice rink in Prague since then. There are others today, for example, on the border between Braník and Lhotka, at the Prague Exhibition Center, in Letňany, in Vršovice and Strašnice, in Veleslavín, in Gröbovce or in Stodůlky.
Given that the stadium was closed shortly before the start of the season, according to HC Smíchov head Michalek Gandalovič, the Smíchov hockey players are looking literally “wherever they can”, for example going to Černošice in Central Bohemia to train.