PaedDr. Jiří Konopásek

“We talked about the European championship and in 1969 there was the great success of the team Vysoké školy Praha in the Cup Winners' Cup. Could you recall this part of your career?” – “It was very pleasant, the match took place in Vienna. I do not know exactly, I can find the result, we won by five or seven points.” – “By six points. 80:74.” – “By six points. This match had the drive you hinted. Here it, perhaps, definitively was because Dinamo Tbilisi was a part of USSR and to a certain degree it represented USSR and we took it as a victory over the occupants as well, absolutely. At that time, all matches were understood in this way – ice hockey players. Those were events which did not only take place in front of TVs but also in the streets. We all do remember it very well.”

“Sometime after 1948 my dad had some problems because his brother was in some, allegedly, based on the information I have, in some weird show trial and he was accused and later sentenced to 13 years in prison. It of course left a deep feeling of injustice in my father because the whole time he was convinced that it was a mistake and that it was unjust. This was also the reason why he left his work in a statistical office because he somehow had some quarrel with the Party which he joined before 1948 and he refused to continue to be its member. He returned the membership card. It was followed by the transfer to the Czech Railways in the position of an ordinary workman.”

“I came across basketball at a grammar school, there was a very good PE teacher, the professor Stanislav Škoda. We called him the professor but he was only a grammar school teacher. First, I started to do gymnastics under his lead but he coached most of sports. After one of those gymnastic trainings – because it was organised even outside the school lessons – he offered me to stay for basketball as well and I had never played it before. There it all started and it was even in the second grade, so actually in the end of nineth grade and in the beginning of the tenth grade. And because he probably liked it, he got me a contract with a real basketball team. And it was Dynamo Praha, previously called Slavia Praha. Then they somehow changed it to Dynamo, there was some reorganization, I do not know much about that today. There I played competitions for the first time.” – “Did you like basketball immediately or did it take some time and effort?” – “I liked it immediately. I was a very easy material regarding persuasion and forcing into the training. I never had any problem with it.”