"It was also much preferred in the local newspapers, and an incredible number of people went to the matches. I have never experienced that in my life. You couldn't hear the coach. You couldn't hear what he was saying to us. You could only read from the mouth. Indeed, it was something interesting for the people, and even women, now that was something. Some even received marriage proposals. It was like that in 1957 too. They wanted to keep them there... In 1971, when we were in Recife, we stayed in a nice hotel by the beach. Two little black boys used to go there, the twins Kosma and Damian, very nice. Our two colleagues bought them sneakers. There was a gentleman, a Czech, who took care of us. He had a jersey made for them, like Czechoslovakia. They came with sneakers, wore them, and did not put them on so as not to wear them out. Their mother came to say thanks - and asked if we could take them to the Czech Republic and that they would be better off there. The girls would like to, but it wasn't realistic at all. It wasn't possible, and it wouldn't even be good. They grew up in a completely different world."
"For me, Brazil was emotional in every way, we had relatives there, and I was the only one who saw them for a long time. I was in my final year, so I had to study, so I crammed in the evenings. And we still won the medal. The championship was the best for me - and it was in Brazil, that was also something." - "Brazil had a Czech president, Kubíček, but how did your relatives get there?" - "My relatives, it was my maternal grandmother's sister, who was ten years younger. Her husband was actually half-Jewish. In 1939 they managed to escape and settled in Brazil. He was a chemical engineer. He settled in very well, so they settled there, and their son was born there. Actually, I was the first to see them and their son. His name was Tomáš, like my brother, and they looked incredibly similar. It was all very nice, my aunt went to the matches with the whole family, and they cheered us in the big club of Brazilians when we played with Brazil, only they tried to show themselves. My aunt used to bring us food because we were terribly skinny from socialist Czechoslovakia. She always brought us something good."
"When we lived in the Old Town square, my father woke us up at four in the morning, saying: 'There's going to be a war, children.' Planes were flying very low above us, over the Old Town square, and we watched it from the window. In the morning and during the day, the Russians settled around Hus with cannons, made a semicircle, and aimed at all the houses. My grandmother, because my brother was in the army at the time and nobody liked Russians in our house, so she opened the window and couldn't think of anything else but to yell at them. They fired one warning shot, so dad soothed grandma that she shouldn't do that. We went to the Russians. They were very young guys, half of them didn't even speak Russian, and they looked like Tatars. We tried to explain to them with our Russian they should go home, that there was nothing here. They looked at us, and they were dismayed. They didn't understand us. I have to tell you one more nice incident. My sister-in-law told me that they woke up with their mother, they were at the cottage, and they turned on the radio. The broadcast started, and mother said: 'Well, that's terrible. They're already broadcasting these plays about the war even in the morning.' So she turned off the radio again, and they continued to sleep peacefully. In the countryside, they found out later than we did in Prague."
Marta Pechová was born on 20 March 1952 in Prague. Her maiden name was Jirásková. At home, and over time almost everywhere, they called her Martina. Her dad was born in South Bohemia in the village of Dolní Nerestce and worked all his life in the field of fishing. Her mom lived with her parents in Prague, where her father owned a handbag business. Dad’s father had a carpentry workshop at Letná in Prague. After the communist coup, both of Marta Pechová’s grandfathers lost their businesses. The Communist regime also confiscated the house at Letná from her paternal grandfather. He was only allowed to work as a laborer in his former carpentry workshop. But thanks to his skill and love for the craft, he carried out prestigious orders, like for the Brazilian embassy. However, he had an incompetent manager, struggled, and died prematurely. Marta Pechová grew up in an anti-communist family in Prague’s Old Town. She started playing basketball in Sparta at 12 as a pivot player. At 15, she started training with Sparta’s A basketball team. A year later, she experienced the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. From her apartment on Old Town Square, she mainly watched Soviet armored vehicles aimed at nearby houses. Her grandmother, who lived through World War I and World War II, used to call names at Soviet soldiers from the window. They sent one warning burst from a machine gun in her direction. At 17, Marta Pechová joined the national team and went with it to the 1970 European Championship in Rotterdam. She achieved her greatest success two years later, at the World Championships in Brazil, where she won a silver medal. At the same time, she met her aunt there, who fled to South America with her husband of Jewish origin. In four years, Marta Pechová won third place at the World Championships in Colombia. She won silver twice and bronze once at the European Championships. In the 1970s, she won six Czechoslovak championships with Sparta Prague. The Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 ended with fourth place for the national team, which the Czechoslovak sports leadership considered a failure. After the Olympics, she finished with the national team and played the rest of the league season for Sparta. She even ran onto the field in her fourth month of pregnancy. During her sports career, she graduated from the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague, where she met her future husband. After their first daughter, a second girl was born. Marta Pechová worked at the endocrinology institute after a five-year maternity leave. After 1989, when her husband started a business with cleaning and disinfecting products for the food industry and other industrial enterprises, she worked in his company. In 2022, she lived in Prague and had two daughters and four granddaughters.
