"I was getting ready, just warming up, in a small indoor pool. I watched through the windows, as my friends were already there, and who I knew was wondering how they met on the starting platform. Snuggled up in jackets, coats, hats, and scarves. They were there in the rain. I had to run to the start. So they threw a bathrobe on me, I ran barefoot, took off my coat, climbed a block in the rain. Well just a terrible weather. I said to myself: I have to do it; I have to do it! Not only for myself, but also for my acquaintances, despite those who did not wish me luck. But mainly for Dad. At that time, my father had been working in mining uranium in the Jáchymov mines for more than six years. He wrote me a letter to succeed as a member of Sokol. I said: I have to! I have to! Start. I jumped into the warm water. I swam well for the first fifty meters, just great. And suddenly so cold, it kind of came to me a bit. It was kind of harder. I turn and worked as hard as I could, I must, I must, I must! I touched the finished. And it was the world record!"
"So I swim every day, I did not go because of you today. But I'm looking forward to tomorrow. We have the perfect veteran club. We go to races in the Czech Republic and abroad. It is the oldest veteran club. One of us is turning ninety-six years this year. Then there's a swimmer of ninety-three years. When she comes out of the locker room and comes to us, we think she won't. And she gets on the block, jumps and swims crawl being ninety-three years! There are the nineties, then we also have young ones in their forties. There are eight or ten of us really old."
"I was already sitting, actually lying down, it was after ten o'clock in the evening. Someone knocked so we opened the door. There was a tall official from Bratislava, a big fan of swimming, an excellent person. 'Slave, come on, we need to talk to you down there in the bar.' So we came to the conclusion that my father was serving his sentence in Leopoldov. It belonged to Nitra and he said: 'Daddy could go home now, half the punishment is already over. You know we don't like to let people go at this time, in the middle of a sentence. 'But he said,' Wait, he will home in a year. 'And he was home even earlier."
Vítězslav Svozil was born on April 9, 1933 in Olomouc. He spent the next twenty years in Náměšť na Hané. He had four siblings and the whole family survived the World War II without any serious problems. Then Vítězslav went to Sokol, as did his father. He practiced many sports, but eventually chose swimming. Following elementary school, he began to study high school. In 1950, his father František Svozil was arrested by the Communist State Security, and in about a year the judge punished him in a fabricated trial for high treason for 16 years in prison. Vítězslav achieved excellent results in swimming. In 1953, he was not admitted to the grammar school graduation without any explanation, and he enlisted in the army. At first he served in a regular unit, only later he represented the army club ÚDA at swimming. He won a number of Czechoslovak championship titles on the chest tracks and in 1957 he swam the world record for 100 meters of breaststroke in Piešťany with a time of 1:12.7. Thanks to swimming, he met a prosecutor from Nitra, who arranged for his father‘s release from the Leopoldov prison at the end of the 1950s. In 1960, Vítězslav represented Czechoslovakia at the Summer Olympics in Rome, where he finished on the 17th position. He had already graduated from evening school and in 1964 he passed the state exam at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport in Bratislava in the fields of physical education and biology. For the next thirty-five years he taught at the current Mendel University in Brno (formerly the University of Agriculture). He got married and had two sons. Prior to 1989, Vítězslav‘s second swimming career began. He won many victories in veteran races in Europe and around the world. Thanks to sports, he overcame stroke, cancer and fractures of two vertebrae. In 2020 he lived in Brno and still swam in the local veteran club.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
