Friend’s tribute
In the 1950s, TVD Partizan in Jesenice was like a second home to us. The gymnastics programme was outstanding, and the Jesenice team was among the best in Yugoslavia. As children we looked up to the finest athletes: Sonja Rozman and Ada Smolnikar, who competed very young at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, as well as Jože Oblak, Tone Stražišar, Emil Čelesnik and others.
With Partizan we also went on holidays to Bled, Valdoltra and Baška. I will never forget camping in Zaka by Lake Bled, where a pole was set up on the water for giant swings. The dives were especially spectacular — the water allowed every kind of trick.
Emil was exceptionally elegant on the apparatus, above all on the pommel horse. During his dentistry studies in Ljubljana, life was not easy. Money was always scarce. He paid for his lodging by coaching younger gymnasts. When I think of what elite sport demands today, I cannot ignore the modest conditions they lived in — especially food that was neither enough nor right for a young athlete.
After graduating he worked as a dentist at the Health Centre in Jesenice. An eight-hour day was never enough. Soon he opened a private practice in Bled. The authorities later banned private practices. Had he been fifty, he could have continued; instead he found a way in Opatija, Croatia, where private work was allowed — in the same country, oddly enough. In 1992 he could work in Slovenia again.
I often sat with him in the laboratory. He was a dental technician as well. He used the most advanced methods, followed what was happening in the world and attended lectures abroad. He had immense knowledge and a rare sense for shape, colour and the placement of teeth. You could hardly tell whether a patient had natural teeth or restorations.
Very few people reach that kind of mastery. He had extraordinary vitality, persistence, invention, diligence, and the courage that sport had given him. He lived for his work, thought too little of himself, and when he fell ill it was already too late. He left us at only 58. Who knows what else he might have done. He was a wellspring of ideas.
I was fortunate to know him. It is an honour to say we were friends.
Janez Šmitek, May 2024