Ing. Iva Zajíčková-Stafová

* 1948

  • “I faced the same problems. I received an invitation and it was all paid and the cycling federation would not have to pay anything at all. For example, the federation organized twenty trips to the West, plus twenty-five to the East, and obviously, it was the male athletes who got it, and I got something if there was something left, or if I traveled together with the men, then it was just one trip. They were not two trips, for instance, when we went for the world championship, it was regarded as one trip.”

  • “I saw that there was no way back, but they were forcing my mom to persuade me to come back. My mom did not do it, she only asked me if I wanted to come back. But I did not want to return, because from time to time somebody did come back and then that person was shown on TV, confessing how mistaken he had been and that he would have never done it again. I said that I would rather jump into the Danube River than go back.”

  • “I don’t want to speculate who they were, the persons who signed cooperation with the secret police because a pressure was exerted on them. One time I was called to the police station in Lenin Street, too, and I was scared, because I did not travel abroad too much, and now I am speaking about why, why I was not allowed to.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ždánice, 04.02.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 03:05:58
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Brno, 27.11.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:26:09
    media recorded in project Tipsport for Legends
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I had to quit cycling in Austria, but the return to Czechoslovakia was out of question

Iva Zajíčková
Iva Zajíčková
photo: archiv pamětníka

Iva Zajíčková-Stafová was born on March 9, 1948 in Brno. She is a former member of the Czechoslovak national team in track cycling. Nine times she won the world championship in riding on historic bicycles, and she holds two silver and four bronze medals from world championships in sprint races in track cycling. She experienced the collectivization of her grandfather’s farm in Ždánice in the 1950s. The whole family had problems with the communist regime, because her father left the Communist Party in the early 1950s. As a punishment he was sent to work in the uranium mines in Dolní Rožínka. This fact then showed up in the personal evaluation of Iva’s sister Jitka, who was not admitted to study at a university as a result of that. Iva graduated from the faculty of electrical engineering. She began with cycling in the sport club TJ Favorit in Brno, and since her career looked promising, she believed that she would be able to go to major races in the West as well. However, she was often forbidden to do so and in 1980 this made her emigrate to Austria where she was promised to receive an Austrian citizenship as well as becoming a member of the Austrian national team. Unfortunately she soon had to quit her career in Austria, because due to an intervention of the Czechoslovak Cycling Federation she did not receive a license for participating in international competitions. Her sister Jitka emigrated to Austria in 1982. Iva Zajíčková-Stafová returned to Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution, and in 2006 she permanently settled in Ždánice and she became elected the town’s mayor.