Though trim and strong, Jana acknowledges with a smile that she is well along in years for a competitive skier. She didn't even try skiing until she was 22. The daughter of a Prague factory owner and a dancing teacher, she graduated from the local university with degrees in literature and physical education. A friend introduced Jana to cross-country skiing. "My mother thought it was unfeminine," she says. "The only time she saw me race, she brought a mirror and comb to the finish line and said, 'That's not the way a lady looks.' "
Nevertheless, Jana continued her training until 1969, when she came to Cicero, Ill. to keep house for an uncle. Soon she had met Dr. Uaclav Hlavaty, another recent Czech arrival, who was interning in obstetrics and gynecology at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. "I don't think it was love at first sight," says long-legged, 5'9" Jana, "but it happened pretty quick." When she wrote home, her mother's stern reply was: "Immediately quit relationship. Help uncle with the housework, and come home."
Jana demurred. "I was too busy fooling around to do any of the three," she says. After they were married, however, the honeymoon ended quickly. "Those first three months," she recalls, "were the bleakest time in my whole life. My husband was gone 24 hours a day at the hospital, and I was unable to speak one word of English, read one newspaper headline or understand one word on the television."
Jana enrolled in a crash English course, then perfected her new language by doing three months as a nanny for a Chicago family. "I worked too much scrubbing floors," she says, "but I grew proud of my English."
She went back into training with a passion, running and lifting weights. "It took a long time for me to bench press my weight—135 pounds," she says. "I had gained 25 pounds after coming here. I tried all the junk food, and I paid for it." To top off her workouts, Jana would do her "hill exercise"—scampering up the 20 flights of stairs in their apartment house, two steps at a time. "By the time I was done," she says, "I didn't even know my own name."
Meanwhile, she had sought permanent residence as a defector, but that would have postponed citizenship until after the Winter Olympics in Austria. With the help of several congressmen and a telegram campaign by fellow members of the ski team, she became an instant American.
Jana now can concentrate on winning a medal. Her coach, Tom Upham, thinks she should finish in the top 10 at Innsbruck. "When Jana wants something," he says, "she gets it, one way or another."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
