Kamil Brabenec

* 1951

  • "Our officials at the time were full of ideas about what we were going to do with Yugoslavia, that it shouldn't be a fiasco, that Petrovic shouldn't give us forty. And that the television would take it. From the group it only showed the Italians and one half with Holland. As the officials sat there, with Petrovic in their heads, I furiously said: 'I'll defend him!' They started laughing, I was known to have zero defensive philosophy. There wasn't much defending at all in Brno, where they said if the opponent scores thirty-five, I'll score forty. In Brno they played and practiced like that, hundreds were falling like on a treadmill. The officials asked me: 'How would you defend him, how do you imagine it?' I knew that one-on-one I couldn't defend him, he had a back jump and a good arm,. But if they help me, he was running under the basket around the double-clone, and we agreed that they would get in his way and stall him and I'd run him over. So they don't give him the ball, that's gonna annoy him, who cares if he doesn't get the ball, then he's gonna start shooting stupid shit, he's gonna get nervous, he's not gonna get it. That's how we practiced in Stuttgart, we agreed on that and the whole half the boys did that. Jarda Skála was on one side, Stano Kropilák on the other. Skala was replaced by Oto Matický, as a rookie he played very well. So when the boys were holding it, I was getting on top of him and Petrovic didn't get the ball. He scored six points in the half, they had a good counterattack and once I fell asleep, I just wiped it out. Thanks to those two three, they helped me under the basket."

  • "I used to train three times a week, but because I was really at the peak of wanting to end up in the Dukla, I trained more. I would go to the gym whenever it was free time, or I would go to the gym when another team was practicing and politely ask if I could practice with them or if they would let me shoot hoops. They usually let me, they already said I had decent talent. So I was shooting six hours a day, I'd come home from school, from the apprenticeship, from work, and I'd go to practice right away. Outside of my training, I really worked and worked and worked to be able to shoot and play well."

  • 1:10:13 - 1:12:50 "Qualification is over, we're at the Olympics, but what now? Fly back, reacclimatise, be home for a fortnight and fly back and acclimatise again? Stupid, we stay here! Vojta Mareš, the leader of the team, says: 'That's nice, but I don't have any money. How are we going to eat, how are we going to train, where are we going to live?' They let us eat in the university canteen for the week. Over Saturday and Sunday, the university coach had a picnic at his house, invited his university team, our national representative team. We spent Saturday-Sunday there so we'd have something to eat. The next week we called a friend in Detroit, Hamilton is right across the street from Detroit, just cross the bridge. My friend drove up, put us in his car, he had a little van. He said, 'Shut up, I'll take you there,' because halfway across the bridge was the border between Canada and America. The fact is, we already had tags that we were Olympians, but we couldn't speak. We got in the car and we drove, like hell we got pulled over, the Canadians didn't care, but the American was pissed that there were nine people and a driver in the back. But my friend handled it and they let us go to Detroit. He took care of us and brought us back. So we vegetated in Canada for a fortnight."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha , 17.05.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:14:16
    media recorded in project Tipsport for Legends
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

He was the golden hand of basketball. They wanted to go out into the world, that’s what drove them forward.

Kamil Brabenec (left) in a fight with Soviet giant, 221 centimeters tall Vladimir Tkachenko, at the European Championships, 1981
Kamil Brabenec (left) in a fight with Soviet giant, 221 centimeters tall Vladimir Tkachenko, at the European Championships, 1981
photo: archive of Kamil Brabenec

Kamil Brabenec was born on 4 February 1951 in Znojmo. He lived with his father and mother in Jihlava until he was ten years old, he had two siblings - a brother and a sister. In 1961 the family moved to Ústí nad Labem. Kamil Brabenec started playing hockey there, but due to heart problems he had to have an operation and was not allowed to play sports for a year. From the end of elementary school he played basketball, then graduated from a chemical apprenticeship. In Ústí nad Labem, he played in the youth league, shooting the basketball alone for up to six hours a day. He went to the army at the age of 19 to RH Pardubice, where he played in the national first league. He was on the junior national team and in 1971 coach Nikolaj Ordnung nominated him for the European Championship in Germany, where he and his team won fifth place. A year later, he made it to the Summer Olympics in Munich, where Czechoslovakia finished eighth. After the war, he moved to Zbrojovka Brno, where he won six national championship titles. He married and started a family in Brno. In 1976 he was sixth with the Czechoslovak team at the Summer Olympics in Montreal, and a year later he won bronze at the European Championships in Liege, Belgium. He repeated the same success with the team in 1981. A year earlier, he made it to the Summer Olympics for the third time in a row, with Czechoslovakia finishing ninth in Moscow. After the 1981 European Championships, he dropped out of the national team for two years due to a customs violation. He had taken scarce cameras and electronics to Czechoslovakia from a trip from Japan to friends, which was not allowed at the time, and was discovered by customs officials. He lost his passport for two years and was given probation in court. He returned to the national team and achieved his greatest success in 1985, leading the team to silver medals at the European Championships in Germany as its top scorer. He finished his national team career with an eighth place finish at the European Championships in Greece. From 1989 to 1991 he played for Debrecen, Hungary. In the Czechoslovak league he became the second most successful scorer in history with 10,726 points. He finished second in the poll for the best Czech volleyball player of the 20th century. After finishing his playing career, he devoted himself to coaching. His daughter Andrea (born in 1974) played for the Czech national basketball team, and his son Kamil (born in 1976) was an extra-league hockey player. In 2021 Kamil Brabenec Sr. lived in Brno.