An unexpected thaw in January 1925, when global warming was still unknown, prevented the 10th European Ice Hockey Championship from being held on the frozen Vltava River in Prague and the Jordán Reservoir, near the city of Tábor. As Czechoslovakia had no artificial ice rink, the teams taking part in the Championship, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Czechoslovakia, had to move to the High Tatras and play on a frozen lake, Štrbské pleso. On 9th January 1925, it was the venue for the first two matches in the tournament. Our hockey players beat Austria (3:0) and Belgium drew with Switzerland (1:1). However, after a snowstorm the lake was buried under snow and the tournament continued, on 11th January, on tennis courts covered by natural ice in the town of Starý Smokovec. On that day each team played two matches, 2 × 20 minutes. In our first match we beat Switzerland (1:0) thanks to a goal by Karol Koželuh after a pass from Josef Maleček. Then, in the afternoon, we defeated Belgium with the terrific score of 6:0.
Without losing a point or conceding a goal, thus Czechoslovakia won their second European title. The Czech team had already achieved similar success in hockey prehistory, back in 1911 and 1914. Our team included the following players: goalkeepers: Jan Peka, Jaroslav Stránský, defencemen: Karel Pešek and Karel Koželuh, and forwards: Josef Maleček, Jaroslav Jirkovský, Josef Šroubek, Otakar Vindyš, Valentin Loos, František Lorenc and Jaroslav Pušbauer. Many of them also got to the top in other sports. Apart from his hockey achievements: a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Antwerp and three European Championship titles, Karel Pešek – Káďa, as a footballer at AC Sparta Praha, was a three-time champion of the Czechoslovak Republic. The duo of Koželuh and Maleček also played tennis at Wimbledon. The four-time European champion Josef Maleček, who played for LTC Prague, played 107 matches for the A team and scored 114 goals. In 1931, he rejected an offer to join the NHL and play for the NY Rangers. From 1943 he was a player/coach at OAP Bratislava, where he helped to lay the foundations of Slovak ice hockey.
Peter Osuský
