Nikola Ogrodníková was the only Czech javelin thrower to advance to the finals at the European Championships in Rome. Nikoleta Jíchová in the 400-meter hurdles and pole vaulters David Holý and Matěj Ščerba will also compete for medals.
Ogrodníková’s performance of 58.52 meters remained roughly two meters behind the prescribed qualification limit, but overall she ranked seventh. However, she was definitely not satisfied with her qualifying performance.
“Today I didn’t have that feeling of ferocity at all and I was more worried,” admitted the Czech athlete.
“It kind of fell out of me in the sector and I still had to push myself and get excited. I need to be a little nervous and I didn’t have that today,” confided Ogrodníková.
Her representative colleagues were far from advancing to Tuesday’s final. Andrea Železná, wife of world record holder Jan Železný, threw 55.57 meters.
Twenty-one-year-old national champion Petra Sičaková performed 52.86. It was necessary to throw 57.71 for the final.
Norwegian Marie-Therese Obstová won the qualification with a performance of 61.45.
The 23-year-old Jíchová will run the final at the top event for the first time on Tuesday. After equaling her personal record in the heat in today’s semi-final, she ran into the finish line from about sixth to seventh place, but then she showed a great finish and made it to the kind of rung that ensured direct advancement. Only the European record holder Femke Bolová remained ahead of her.
Jíchová improved her personal record by 29 hundredths to 54.59 seconds and also met the Olympic limit for the Paris Games.
“I’m terribly happy. I think my run didn’t go that well. When I ran into the finish line, I felt that I wasn’t in a very good position positionally, that I was moving quite far behind. That it was now or never. And it was now,” she said in an interview with Czech Television.
The semi-final was the final for Vít Müller in the same discipline. He improved his season high to 49.25 and took 11th place.
Pole vaulters only had to overcome 560 centimeters to advance, after which the qualification ended. Holý had a completely smooth path to the finals, who conquered all three successive heights for the first time. He thus shared the first place with four other competitors, including the world record holder Armand Duplantis.
On the contrary, Ščerba experienced a dramatic qualification. The winner of the Odložil Memorial saved himself for the third time at 525 and 545 centimeters. He also had two unsuccessful attempts at 560, but in the second one the referees set his racks incorrectly, so he got a substitute attempt. He took advantage of this and advanced from the eleventh place to Wednesday’s final.
The double Czech participation in the men’s pole vault will be the first time since Munich 2002, when Adam Ptáček and Štěpán Janáček failed.
Vilém Stráský is seventh at the European Athletics Championships after three disciplines of the decathlon. He collected 2630 points and only loses six of them to the world record holder Kévin Mayer from France. Another Frenchman, Makenson Gletty, leads the competition with 2788 points.
Stráský entered the decathlon with a personal best time of 10.65 seconds. In the distance, with a jump of 737 cm, he came close to his maximum by ten centimeters and immediately recorded another life performance in the shot put. He came five centimeters closer to the fifteen-meter mark and improved the record by almost three decimetres.
At the break on the first day, he loses twelve points to the coveted fifth place, which would help him in the fight for the Olympic Games in Paris.
The high jump and the 400 meter run still await the all-rounder today.
2024-06-10 12:23:37
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