Jaroslav Schimmer

* 1934

  • "I didn't start [skating] until 14. The children had been dating for three or four years, their mothers got up at four in the morning. I went to Karlovy Vary sometimes and I saw a poster, so I was standing by it. And some stranger, I've never seen him again in my life, said: 'You'd like that, wouldn't you?' And I said yes. So he went and checked me in. 'What's your name and where do you live?' I said it at home and dad said that he wouldn’t buy me any skates. He said that I was stupid and that I would never learn to skate. Later he was surprised how far I got.”

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    Karlovy Vary, 28.09.2013

    (audio)
    délka: 37:49
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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And it was over. The ice revue was dissolved.

Jaroslav Schimmer
Jaroslav Schimmer
zdroj: soutěž

Jaroslav Schimmer was born in Rakovník. When he was 11 years old, his father, a railway dispatcher, was transferred to Nové Sedlo, from where Jaroslav also began to go to his first figure skating trainings a few years later. He had an amazing career in the Czech Ice Revue. He started skating at the age of 14, thus relatively late, and moreover by complete coincidence. Once in Karlovy Vary, he was standing in front of a poster and a completely foreign man asked him if he would like to skate, and immediately registered him. Before the military service, Jaroslav worked in a porcelain factory, and after the military service he happened to ask members of the Czechoslovak Ice Revue if they would accept him. At first, they turned him down, but then they sent him a plane ticket straight away to the skating tour. He spent the next years around the world - Russia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Georgia… After the dissolution of the Czechoslovak Ice Revue in 1968, he spent the next 20 years at Elefant Café. But he never forgot the years on the ice.