Around 12,000 refugees from Czechoslovakia came to Switzerland in 1968. Here they have left their mark everywhere, but nowhere more than in sport.
Czech President Petr Pavel has been visiting Switzerland since Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Federal Council will receive the state guest at the Bundesplatz in Bern with military honors. The two countries have a lot in common, said the Federal Council, and there is a lively exchange in politics, business and culture.
But the Czech Republic and Switzerland are also historically connected, not least because of the events surrounding the “Prague Spring” in 1968.
At that time, Switzerland took in around 12,000 refugees from the former Czechoslovakia; People who then settled here and left their mark.
These Czechoslovakian traces are nowhere more evident than in Swiss tennis.
World leaders among women and men
It all started with him, with Jakob Hlasek. Born in Prague in 1964, he came to Switzerland with his parents at the age of four after the Prague Spring. He was the first tennis player with Czechoslovakian roots to celebrate success for Switzerland. He reached the final of the Davis Cup with the Swiss team and won the doubles competition at the French Open in 1992 with Marc Rosset.
In 1991, Jakob Hlasek won the Swiss Indoors in Basel and beat the American John McEnroe in the final.
Keystone/Michael Kupferschmidt
Wrote a similar story Michel Kratochvil. His parents also fled to Switzerland after the Prague Spring; he himself was born in Bern in 1979. “Tennis was very important in Czechoslovakia,” says Kratochvil, “and that also shaped our family.” Like hardly any other country in the Eastern Bloc, Czechoslovakia supported tennis and produced two of the best athletes of their time, Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova.
Michel Kratochvil was a member of the Swiss Davis Cup team for many years.
Keystone/Fabrice Coffrini
Also has Czechoslovakian roots Stan Wawrinkaalthough his family history was somewhat different. His great-grandfather had already left the country in 1946, directly after the Second World War and before the communists took over the match. The family’s journey led via Germany to Switzerland, where Wawrinka was born in 1985. During his tennis career he won three Grand Slam titles.
At 39 years old, Stan Wawrinak is still playing on the ATP tour.
Georgios Kefalas/Keystone via AP
The same applies to Swiss women’s tennis: Without the influence from Czechoslovakia, Swiss successes would have been much sparser. Example Belinda Bencic: Your father comes from what is now Slovakia and immigrated to Switzerland with his family in 1968 as a five-year-old boy.
Belinda Bencic only recently returned to the WTA tour as a young mother.
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
And last but not least, of course Martina Hingisthe greatest player that Swiss tennis has ever produced.
Martina Hingis after her first triumph at Wimbledon (1997).
AP Photo/File/Dave Caulkin
Martina Hingis’ family comes from Košice, in eastern Slovakia. Her mother, Melanie Molitor, was a tennis player herself and ran a tennis school in Switzerland. Thanks to her upbringing and training with her mother, Martina Hingis became number 1 in the world at the age of 16 and celebrated 25 Grand Slam successes over the course of her career – in singles and doubles.
And what about actually Roger Federer? Perhaps the greatest tennis player of all time?
Roger Federer (2024) visiting the US Open.
EPA/CJ Gunther
Sure, his mother Lynette comes from South Africa, his father Robert from Switzerland – but there’s a bit of the Eastern Bloc in Roger too. On the one hand, one of his first coaches, Adolf Kacovsky, was a native of Czechoslovakia. But above all, of course, there is his long-time companion and wife Mirka Vavrinec, who used to play tennis herself – and was born in Bojnice, a small town in what is now Slovakia.
