Miloš Říha passed away

The former head coach of the Czech national team Milos Riha has passed away today at 61 in Prague. On August 18, the coach was admitted to the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague. His health has deteriorated dramatically over the past few weeks. The cause of death was varicose veins that spilled over into thrombophlebitis. Earlier, the coach suffered from coronavirus.

"The last month was a big struggle," his son Milos told the website of the Sport daily on Tuesday. "For us all, the demise of such a great and wonderful man with a big heart is an undescribable shock," he added.

Riha has coached Spartak Moscow, Atlant Mytishchi, with whom he reached the Gagarin Cup final in 2011, Avangard Omsk and SKA St Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League, earning the award for the best coach in the 2010/2011 season. He also won two Slovak titles with Slovan Bratislava.

Riha took over the Czech national team in 2018 and led it to the fourth place at the 2019 IHWCin Bratislava. He was supposed to carry on at the 2020 championships in Switzerland which, however, were cancelled because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Czech Federation announced after the 2019 tournament that Riha would be replaced by Filip Pesan as of the 2020/2021 season.

Tweets by @eurohockey