lit a candle 3h agoFound his Paměť národa interview late one night while digging into old conditioning methods for a grad project on hockey training history, 2 a.m. in my apartment with the Czech subtitles half working. He talked about running the Motor České Budějovice conditioning from 1963 to 1969 like it was the most natural thing in the world, all round training before anyone else there called it that. Ninety eight years old and still precise about it. Thank you for the archive, and for the work.
Their story
Arnošt Binter was a Czech teacher, coach and all-round sportsman from České Budějovice in South Bohemia. He is remembered as the first conditioning coach of the city's ice hockey club Motor to insist on broad, all-round training for its players, and later as a leading figure in Czech ski and…
Arnošt Binter was a Czech teacher, coach and all-round sportsman from České Budějovice in South Bohemia. He is remembered as the first conditioning coach of the city's ice hockey club Motor to insist on broad, all-round training for its players, and later as a leading figure in Czech ski and snowboard teaching and in the revived Sokol movement.
He was born on 22 July 1928 in Bratislava, the youngest of four sons of Jan Binter, a democratically minded notary, and Marie Binterová, a nurse. In 1938 the family had to leave Slovakia and moved to České Budějovice, where he lived through the end of the Second World War and the bombing of the city in March 1945. After the war the whole family joined the renewed Sokol, and he took up cycling, racing for the national team between 1949 and 1951. He also learned, for fun, to ride a tall unicycle, and in 1948 he took part in the 11th All-Sokol Slet in Prague as an instructor.
After the Communist takeover his father was arrested and sentenced to prison. For political reasons Arnošt was refused a place at university and was conscripted instead into the auxiliary technical battalions (PTP), where he entertained fellow soldiers with trick riding on his unicycle. After military service he trained as a teacher and taught Czech and physical education, from 1960 until his retirement at the secondary technical school of civil engineering in České Budějovice. He helped introduce compulsory ski courses into school physical education and trained teachers to run them, and for years he led summer camps at Holubov below the Kleť mountain.
From 1963 to 1969, at the invitation of František Mizera, he led the summer preparation of the Motor hockey team. He brought basketball, cycling, skiing and water sports into the players' training, and the improved fitness helped the club return to the top division. After 1989 he worked in the skiing commission of the Czech Sokol Organisation, and in 1991 he was elected chief of the revived Sokol II unit in České Budějovice. He championed the teaching of snowboarding, made an instructional film, wrote a textbook, trained instructors and chaired the snowboarding commission at the Ministry of Education. He also sat on the fair play commission of the Czech Olympic Committee and on the board of Interski Czech Republic.
He received the Fair Play Award in 2001 and the Gold Medal of the Czech Sokol Organisation in 2018. His son Lukáš became a World Cup snowboarder and instructor, and his great-grandson, also named Arnošt, plays hockey for Motor.
Arnošt Binter died in České Budějovice on Friday 6 November 2026, aged 98. His death was reported by Českobudějovický deník and the Motor club. No cause of death was made public.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (Arnošt Binter, Czech Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0), Českobudějovický deník, Paměť národa (Post Bellum). Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“Naše metodika základního lyžování a snowboardingu je na srovnatelné světové úrovni, někdy se dá říci že i na vyšší.”
On Czech ski and snowboard teaching methods, after the Interski congress in Austria, Českobudějovický deník, 2011
Photos
1Arnošt Binter
by People Forever
