Czech in-line hockey history

History of the Czech national team began to be written in 1995, when the national team attended it´s first world championship in the United states. A year later, the only absence at the FIRS world championship came, because the leads decided to play at the first-run IIHF world championship. Since that time, the Czechs have been attending almost every in-line hockey event - no matter if it´s FIRS or IIHF or the World games.

The Czech national team only played at the world championships and the World games, not any other international game. It´ s almost the same with the other teams; there isn´t enough space for other games because many countries include ice hockey players in their rosters and the ice hockey season is long.

The Czech republic has played 118 games, 107 of them at the World championship. The first game (and the first victory) came in 1995 at the group stage of the World championship. The Czech republic beat South Africa 31-0, which has been one of the highest victories of it´s in-line hockey history. Czechs beat this record twice - against Ecuador in 1999 and four years later against Greece, they won both games 32-0.

36 of 77 wins at world championships were double figure... But defeats came as well. Italy was the first to beat the Czech republic - in 1995 (3-6). Czechs have been even scored ten goals against them twice - both in a game against the USA (1995 defeat 1:10, in 1998 Czechs managed to score one goal more and were defeated 2:10). One of the interesting things is te fact that, according to statistics, tied game in in-line hockey is as improbable as tied game in baskeball - only four from almost 120 national team games ever played eneded up tied and six more were decided in overtime (in play offs). The longest game in the history of the Czech national team ended up in the third overtime - Czechs lost to the USA 2-3 in the gold medal game in 2003.

The Czech republic won the only world champion title in Spain in 2007. The roster was full of well known ice hockey players (roster of the world champions: Tomáš Štúrala, Martin Altrichter - Karel Rachůnek, Milan Toman, Rostislav Klesla, Pavel Zavrtálek, Jiří Provazník, Martin Tvrzník, Aleš Zacha, Martin Vozdecký, Petr Sakrajda, David Balázs, Jan Besser, Filip Čech, Petr Šinágl, Tomáš Novák. Coaches: Jiří Suhrada, Martin Mecera.). We can find some first tier ice hockey players in majority of the FIRS tournaments´ rosters - like Angel Nikolov (Litvínov) and Stanislav Rosa, Tomáš Plekanec, Ondřej Veselý or Ivan Rachůnek.

The women national team has attended seven of the eight championships played. They won bronze medals at the first one when they beat Austria, Singapur, Great Britain, France and Germany, and only lost to both teams from overseas. Austria was the historically first rival of the Czech republic (7-1); against Singapur the Czech have won their biggest victory (21-0). But a defeat by Canada that has been written in history (0-8) came. Nobody else has beat the Czech national women team by more than eight goals. Canada did it twice - for the second time 9-1 in 2008...