Zdeňka Veřmiřovská

Zdeňka Veřmiřovská (June 27, 1913, Kopřivnice, Moravia – May 13, 1997) was a Czechoslovak/Czech gymnast who competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics receiving silver in the team event, and in the 1948 Summer Olympics winning gold in the team event.

She was born in Kopřivnice and died in Prague.

Veřmiřovská was a long-time mainstay of the Czechoslovakian women's gymnastics team, helping her team to gold at the inaugural World Championships for women in 1934. She demonstrated consistent excellence by helping her team successfully defend their world team champion status at the next World Championships in 1938. She showed enough tenacity to persevere and help her team to gold again, a whole 14 years after initially helping them to their first world team title, at the 1948 London Summer Olympics, despite weathering the disappointment she and her teammates sustained when they lost the team title to the German team at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.

Veřmiřovská was an exceptionally good competitor on balance beam. At the 1936 Summer Olympics, she logged the competition's second-highest optional balance beam exercise score of 14.10, tied with Germany's Erna Bürger, and only behind top-scorer Gabriella Mészáros of Hungary. Her combined compulsory and optional exercise total of 23.10 on this apparatus was second outright, behind, again, only Mészáros. At the 1948 London Summer Olympics, she performed even more brilliantly in her voluntary exercise on this apparatus, garnering a first-place finish for that part of the competition.

Veřmiřovská was also a virtuoso who excelled in the all-around combined exercises. At the first-ever world championships for women in 1934, where individual and team placements were decided not only by gymnastics events, but also athletics events, in the gymnastics-events-only segment of the competition, she logged the 2nd-highest total of 30.85, ahead of even her teammate, the first-ever women's World All-Around Champion in the sport Vlasta Děkanová, and just behind Judit Tóth of Hungary. (The scores in the athletics events, combined with the gymnastics events, meant that Děkanová was the highest overall-finisher at those games, whereas Veřmiřovská finished 5th.) Veřmiřovská actually repeated the feat of defeating Děkanová when, incredibly, both still competing after World War II, they were the top 2 competitors at a domestic (Czechoslovakian) gymnastics competition held on 6 October 1946. Dozens of participants competed, including 3 individuals who were on the Olympic team less than 2 years later: Miloslava Misáková, Olga Šilhánová, and Věra Růžičková, all outscored by many percentage points by both Veřmiřovská and Děkanová who were in a class by themselves, despite both being well into their thirties. Veřmiřovská scored 67.2 points, or 96% of the maximum possible score of 70, while Děkanová placed 2nd with 66.7 points, at 95.28% of the maximum possible score. The next-highest competitor was Bozena Kalova who scored a full 5 percentage points lower than Dekanova. The majority of the other gymnasts scored under 76% of the maximum possible score.

Veřmiřovská achieved what was probably her greatest individual accolade in her competitive career at the 1938 World Championships where she won the silver medal in the All-Around just behind her teammate Děkanová who successfully defended her 1st-place finish from the immediately previous worlds in 1934. Additionally, she had a high placement of 7th in the individual standings at the 1936 Olympics.