Jaroslav Drobný

Jaroslav Drobný (12 October 1921 in Prague, Czechoslovakia – 13 September 2001 in London, United Kingdom) was an amateur tennis champion as well as being an ice hockey player for the Czechoslovakian national team. He left Czechoslovakia in 1949 and traveled as an Egyptian citizen before becoming a citizen of Great Britain in 1959, where he died in 2001.

Ice Hockey Career
He was a silver medalist with the Czechoslovakian ice hockey team in the 1948 Olympics. In the final match, Czechoslovakia and Canada tied goalless but Canada won the gold medal due to a better overall goal average. Drobný scored 9 goals in 8 games at the Olympics. Jaroslav Drobný was also a member of the Czechoslovakian national ice hockey team which won the gold medals at the 1947 World Ice Hockey Championships in Prague. He scored 15 goals in 7 games in the tournament including a hat-trick in the decisive victory over USA which gave his country its first ever World Championships title. In 1997, Drobný has been inducted in the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Hall of Fame.

Drobný could have become the first ever European player to be put on a National Hockey League reserve list when the Boston Bruins added in 1949. Apparently, he was offered $20,000 to come over to play for Boston but he has refused, preferring to remain playing amateur hockey and retain the flexibility to play tennis during the summers. The first European to play in the NHL eventually became Ulf Sterner from Sweden when he started for the New York Rangers for the first time on 27 January 1965.

Tennis Career
He would go on to play tennis winning the singles championship at the French Open twice (1951 and 1952) and Wimbledon once (1954). He would win both the men's doubles and mixed doubles at the French Open in 1948 and he would earning a  number one ranking in the world in 1954. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983.

Autobiography
In 1955, Jaroslav Drobný published his autobiography titled Champion in Exile. He was married to Rita Anderson Jarvis, onetime English tournament player. He died in Tooting, London.