EUGENE (from our correspondent) – The Czech record holder Mäki fell to the back of the starting field during her run and faced the difficult task of breaking into one of the six directly advancing positions.
“They kicked terribly in front and it seems pointless to me to spend energy there in fights. But I kept falling back. I thought it was not good and was counting on the last five hundred,” Mäki said.
After two-thirds of the race she did start to move forward, but only for a moment. “Two girls blocked me, there was nowhere to run. So I left it for the last hundred,” she explained.
And in the finish line she really started to push forward. Just the way she likes it. “When I get there, it’s rare that I can’t. That’s where I trust myself,” admitted Pavel Tunka’s ward. She reached the sixth place by fifteen hundredths ahead of the Portuguese Marta Penová Freitasová, otherwise she would not have been in the semi-finals.
“It didn’t look very certain. I was lucky, but it worked out,” she acknowledged and was already watching Mezuliáník’s fight in the third heat on the screen. He was the fastest of all, the Czech miler was far from the top six, so she had to wonder if her time of 4:06.55 would be enough.
Delayed gratification
“For a while, the race was developing quite hopelessly, as I was at the back. But when I was running through the finish line, I suspected that it could be a narrowly advanced or narrowly non-progressive place,” admitted Jaromíra Odvárka.
The joy came late. “I was bleakly lying there for a while, I only learned about the progress from the media and I was happy,” said Mezuliáníková, who was decorated with a hairdo with strings in the national colors. “He was born in pain, it’s not easy to train him, but hopefully I’ll be able to do it sooner than in an hour,” she smiled.
Unlike the Olympics, the semi-finals await the Czech milers on the second day, on Saturday evening local time (Sunday at 4.05 CEST). Mäki will start half an hour after his partner Filip Sasínek. “It’s a shame that we won’t be able to watch our races live, but we’ve already experienced that,” he smiles.
For both Czech milers, it is also a pleasant bonus to advancing to the semi-finals that they will once again compete at the Hayward Field stadium with a hundred years of history, which is known as the Mecca of running. “I really like the film about Prefontaine,” recalls Mäki of the film about the famous runner from the local university, whose life was cut short in 1975 in a car accident near the campus.
“It’s such a nice story about a runner. A beautiful story and history, it is a certain model for us,” Mezuliáníková nods. Both of them are going to run up to the Prefontaine monument in the fatal turn. But only after your races. Perfect for that final…