Deaf Czech Winter Olympian: Jakub Nosek
As we all know, the last month from February 4th to 20th was the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. We learned that a deaf person was there and competed in the Olympics for bobsledding. That person is Jakub Nosek and he is from the Czech Republic.
(PHOTOS 1, 2 and 3)
For the two-man bobsled, Jakub and his teammate placed 15th. For the four-man bobsled, Jakub and his team placed 21st. We reached out to Jakub for an interview. Jakub does not know sign language so we had the interview through email. I will sign what we conversed about.
Jakub is 32 years old and he was born and raised in Czech. He has been to 3 Summer Deaflympics for long jump, high jump, and decathlon: 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan, 2013 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and 2017 in Samsun, Turkey. He said he stopped because of an achilles tendon injury.
Now for the “hearing” Winter Olympics, he has participated with his bobsled team twice: 2018 in South Korea and this recent one 2022 in China. So, Jakub has been to a total of 5 Olympics, 3 deaf and 2 hearing.
(PHOTOS 4 AND 5)
We asked Jakub how he was able to communicate with his hearing bobsled team because he is completely deaf in his right ear and lost about 85% of his hearing in his left since he was a small child. He said that he relies a lot on lip reading and can speak for himself. We asked him how he was able to communicate with his team during bobsledding. He explained to us that he can feel the rhythm and has set up a rhythm with his team. He mentioned the movie “Cool Runnings” as an example. He said what you see in the movie about the team feeling each other’s rhythm is the same concept as what he does with his team.
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Jakub said that bobsledding is a full-time job so this recent Olympics is his last with bobsledding because he is in a new chapter in his life as he is now starting a family and building a house. He also added that he will continue with sports and would like to train other people.
The last thing we asked is if he had anything he would like to share with the Deaf community and he said “Just be yourselves. Do what you love and believe in yourself and with that, you can achieve anything you want.”
Thank you, Jakub, for your time. We, The Daily Moth, congratulate you on your achievements and wish you all the best with your new chapter in life.
Jakub’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kuba_nosku/
Jakub’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jakub.nosek.5