Former Wimbledon champion Drobny dies

Former Wimbledon champion and Olympic ice hockey medallist Jaroslav Drobny has died aged 79.

The Prague-born Czech -- who won a silver medal at the 1948 Games and then added the 1954 Wimbledon title to his 1951 and 1952 French Open crowns -- died in his adopted home of London on Thursday, Jose Slajs of the Czech Tennis Federation said on Friday.

Drobny had been in hospital for two weeks prior to his death.

A burly, bespectacled left-hander, Drobny won an astonishing 133 singles titles in his career but will be best remembered for his defeat of Ken Rosewall in that 1954 All England Club final, his third Wimbledon final appearance.

Son of a Prague tennis club groundsman, Drobny made his first Wimbledon appearance in 1938 as a 16-year-old, losing in the first round to Argentine Alejo Russell.

War was imminent and Drobny had just one more crack at the grasscourt Grand Slam event, winning a couple of rounds in 1939, before World War II broke out.

"We were just trying to stay alive," Drobny later recalled. "The torch of freedom with the Allies gave us hope... Food was short, but we got along."

NATIONAL HERO

Drobny avoided deportation to Germany as a forced labourer, and was able to play ice hockey throughout the war, then his best sport.

Indeed the prescription dark glasses he wore on the tennis court were the legacy of an ice hockey accident which injured his eyesight.

He took up tennis again after the war and was in the world's top 10 for 10 successive years from 1946.

In 1946 Drobny was permitted by the new Communist government to play Wimbledon again. Rusty from little play and expecting little from himself, he beat the world's best, Jack Kramer in five marathon sets in the fourth round, reached the semifinals and was hailed a national hero at home.

At the time he was a remarkable two-sport world-class athlete -- ice hockey in the winter, tennis the rest of the time.

So good was he as a forward on the ice that he played a leading role in Czechoslovakia winning the world amateur championship in 1947, scoring three goals in the final against the U.S., and collecting silver at the 1948 Olympics.

By 1949, though, tennis had taken over. That was the year Drobny made the decision to leave his homeland for good, defecting with Davis Cup team mate Vladimir Cernik during a Swiss tournament at Gstaad.

He won his Wimbledon title under an Egyptian passport before becoming a British citizen in 1959 and lived in London until his death.

Drobny had not been to the Czech Republic since 1985, when he attended the World Ice Hockey Championships in Prague.