UWB and AK Skoda Pilsen to collaborate on training top athletes. A laboratory will be established

The UWB and the Athletic Club Skoda Pilsen aim to help athletes achieve top performances and to educate future physical education teachers. As part of the planned construction of a new grandstand at the city stadium in Skvrňany, a medical and research facility will be also established.

Quarter-miler Tereza Petržilková or endurance runner Tereza Hrochová are both successful athletes who started their sports careers in Pilsen and at the University of West Bohemia. To continue nurturing such promising athletes who represent even at the Olympic Games, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and the Athletic Club AK Skoda Pilsen aim to focus on athlete training from a scientific perspective.

“The Faculty of Education will have a permanent and professional background inside the new grandstand at the stadium, equipped with scientific instruments that diagnose physiological changes in athletes' bodies before and after performance. Until now, we had to move them back and forth when needed,” explained Pavel Mentlík, Dean of the Faculty of Education. The measured values can then be used to adjust training plans. “This area will see the most significant progress. Athletes from the Pilsen Škoda club will be able to use and draw from the latest modern trends, knowledge, and sports equipment, which can once again bring us closer to the world’s top,” said AK Skoda Pilsen club chairman Miloslav Plašil.

The laboratory will also serve top athletes at UWB included in the Ministry of Education’s UNIS program. UWB has already been cooperating with AK Skoda for two years, having only a memorandum in place until now, and since the cooperation has proven successful, both parties have now signed a long-term cooperation agreement. “The partnership will benefit not only the club, to which we will offer our professional background and experts, but also our students, who can try leading youth training sessions and thus connect learned theory with practice at the stadium and in training,” describes Václav Salcman from the Center for Physical Education and Sports of the Faculty of Education.

In the largest West Bohemian club Skoda Pilsen several hundred children and youth actively train and compete under the guidance of professional and experienced coaches. The city of Pilsen plans to build a new grandstand for them for 190 million crowns. Construction is scheduled to start in the coming months.