Petr Kubíček

“The sportsmen had to join the army before 1 July. I had filed my university applications and even had an offer to play as a goalkeeper in Hradec Králové where I was about to study faculty of pedagogy – but even the hockey bosses could not change politics. They thought they would find a way around it, that they would explain it but couldn’t push me through. So I missed my enlistment day. I was supposed to enlist on 1 October when people were only accepted to combat units and I could not apply to Dukla. I asked my coach Klapáč what should I do and he gave me an advice: ‘Get in there now.’ By the way, Klapáč later explained to me why I was leaving the national team. Even though he was a communist he was level with me: ‘Bad luck, your brother had emigrated.’ I was probably the only soldier in the Comecon who voluntarily enlisted earlier than required. I arrived to Liberec and told the officer: ‘Klapáč sends me. I should have come on the first but I couldn’t because of school.’ I then spent two days there in civvies because they had no job for me, then they let me in there. I underwent the application process and thanks to that was able to stay in the Dukla club.”

“As a member of the Army Center for Sports my job was to do the sport for which I had gotten there. Depending on the season, there would be single-phase, double-phase or triple-phase training sessions. In the summer we would go to a camp in Hamr na Jezeře. There was a beautiful lake there – later destroyed by uranium industry – and a military base where we ran, paddled, jumped on trampoline, played tennis, worked out… Simply drill as usual in Dukla but we would practically only do sports. We would even get nutritious diet, pocket money and quite some freedom. They did not demand some particular dress discipline and so on. I was with the army and did sports – it was comparable to professional sports. One could not say it out loud back then but in principle, it was sports on a professional level. With the army unit, military employment was the primary one. Only after fulfilling my duties had I time to play hockey. We would go to train in Neratovice twice a week, and once per weekend or twice a week play a game. Emergency had also precedence over hockey: ‘It is your shift, bad luck, you don’t go anywhere.’ It was a military drill and the conditions reflected it. For instance the military diet was incomparable to the one in Army Center, and I suffered from that.”