František Kaberle

* 1951

  • “Just Eda Novák and I went during our engagement in Japan in 1982 to stay in the Shinagawa Prince Hotel with the manager. The rest were in the company house, which was about a ten minute walk from the hotel. The whole team was sitting however they could during the day, but we couldn’t, our knees were already destroyed. There was an entertainment area and a cafeteria for them. At night they rolled out their sleeping mats and slept on them in a huge space, all twenty-five of them. It was just the two of us in the hotel. I remember it like it was yesterday, that we were checking in and a girl maybe twenty six years old, working reception, says to us: ‘Passport.’ Eda Novák and I take out our passports and she says, but here remember that she was twenty-six and the Summer Olympics in Tokyo were in 1964, she takes the passports and says: 'Ah, Czechoslovakia. Věra Čáslavská!’ And the tears welled up in our eyes.”

  • “It was similar in the national team. There were people there as support that didn’t know a thing about hockey, we had hardly even seen them before. They just kept rooting us on. I remember that at the World Championship in Vienna when we were leaving from the stadium to the bus, the place was full of fans. They traveled there through Sportturist like an organized trip, part of which was visiting a hockey game. They would come up to us. And we signed various things in a various ways. And the “eye,” as we liked to call them, would call us out: ‘Do you know what you’re signing? What if the Charter 77 were on the other side?’ We told them: ‘We don’t care about politics, we’re hockey players.’ But that wasn’t good enough of an excuse for them.”

  • “The Canada cup. Back then Canadians thought that they were the ones who could play and that everyone else in the world were chumps who played hockey with branches torn off of trees for hockey sticks. Before I started the Canada cup, we played one scrimmage game with them. Our trainer Mr. Gut came to our locker room, fresh from the press conference, when we were getting our gear on for training, and he was quite furious, though usually he was a decent guy. He tells us: ‘Guys, I just got back from the press conference and that Scotty Bowman...’ That was the Canadian trainer who was answering questions. When the reporters asked: Well, Scotty, what do you say to Czechoslovak national team, the fresh world champions at Katowice in May 1976. Mr. Gut says: ‘So, Bowman thinks for a second and says: Well, they have nice white jerseys.’ They made a total joke out of us. Then in the basic we group we played with them and we beat them 1:0. Milan Nový scored the winning goal and Vlado Dzurilla, our goalie, who was catching, it was really unbelievable. I remember when the game ended and the Canadian players kept waiting for something to happen, the audience too. It was a quiet as a church. They simply couldn’t believe that some guys from over there in Czechoslovakia, which is however many times smaller than Canada, had beat them."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 13.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:59:02
    media recorded in project Tipsport for Legends
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

In Japan they called me Kaberle San

František Kaberle Senior in the Poldi SONP Kladno jersey
František Kaberle Senior in the Poldi SONP Kladno jersey
photo: archiv Františka Kaberleho

František Kaberle was born on 6 August 1951 in Kladno. His parents worked as store clerks, František had a younger sister named Vilma. He started ice skating at six years old and played soccer as well, but when we was seventeen he set his sights on playing hockey. He played for the first-league team of Kladno for most of his career. He studied electrical technology at technical school and in 1972 he went to fulfill his required military service at the hockey club Dukla Jihlava. In 1974 he won the Czechoslovak championship with the team and fought his way onto the Czechoslovak national team. Between 1975 and 1980 he won the Czechoslovak championship five times with the hockey club Poldi SONP Kladno. With the national team he won two world championship titles in 1976 and 1977, and, in the ranks of the national team, he played in the finale of the Canada Cup 1976, in which Czechoslovakia lost to the Canadian home team. Two sons, František a Tomáš, were born to him and his wife Ludmila in 1973 and 1978, respectively, both of which would go on to become world champions with the Czechoslovak national team and win the Stanley Cup with their different teams. Following the end of his career as a player, František Kaberle trained youth in Kladno and worked also a secretary for his club. In 2020 he lived in his hometown of Velká Dobrá and was retired.