Patrick Fischer speaks out for the first time after his resignation

Patrick Fischer breaks his silence. Almost two months after his dismissal as coach of the Swiss national ice hockey team and just over a week after his former team lost the World Championship final against Finland, he published a video interview on his YouTube channel. The interview was conducted by Peter Röthlisberger from Chefredaktion GmbH, a PR agency. The interviewer is the former editor-in-chief of Blick and was once the domestic editor of Weltwoche.

The lunch that got the ball rolling

Fischer says at the beginning of the interview that he had been well advised and had deliberately waited to make his own statements. It was important to bring calm so that the team could concentrate on the World Cup.

Looking back: Fischer was dismissed as coach of the national ice hockey team in mid-April. This was after it became public that he had bought a fake Covid certificate to coach his team at the 2022 Olympic Games without being vaccinated.

Fischer's omission became public after he blabbed during a lunch while filming for Swiss television. Unlike SRF, Fischer maintains that this was an off-the-record conversation, the content of which was not intended for the public. Pascal Schmitz, the SRF editor who later dropped the bombshell, wrote an e-mail to Finn Sulzer, the media manager of the Swiss Ice Hockey Association, the day after the conversation and assured him that he was aware of the off-the-record agreement. "I was irritated that SRF said afterwards that this was not the case," says Fischer.

"It wasn't right"

"It was the most difficult situation in my ten years as a coach," says Fischer, looking back on the Covid pandemic. "It wasn't right, I shouldn't have done it as a national team coach back then," he continues. At the same time, he says, he took responsibility for his body with his decision. His gut feeling told him that he shouldn't get the vaccine.

Fischer assures that he wanted to go public with the truth - regardless of the SRF research. However, he only wanted to do this after the end of his time as national team coach, i.e. after the home World Cup. "You're always smarter with hindsight," says Fischer.