Jakub Vadlejch feels better shape than last year. Tomáš Staněk ready for the challenge
This year, the men's javelin is expecting a duel between our biggest athletic star of the moment, Jakub Vadlejch, and two-time world champion Anderson Peters from Grenada. Peters dominated last year, and Vadlejch would certainly like to return the defeat to him in his thirteenth start at Golden Spike. This season, Jan Železný's athlete is in top form. The shot putter Tomáš Staněk will be starting for the eighth time.
Jakub Vadlejch – Golden spike is always special
This season, the member of the Jan Železný group is in top form. He has already thrown 88 meters in three races, and with his performance in Turku of 89.51, he leads this year's current world tables.
Jakub already has one trophy from Ostrava Golden Spike at home, when he won here in 2018, and he would like to add a second one on Tuesday. "I feel great. So far I have had the best start to the season in my career, which of course gives me the confidence to compete with the best. I won four out of five meetings and lost the fifth by only four centimetres. I think it's a good thing that this year there was such a gap between the individual races before Golden Spike, because I'm looking forward to tomorrow even more. The Golden Spike is the biggest meeting in our country and it is a big challenge for every Czech athlete to succeed at it. I believe that the conditions will meet tomorrow and I will show the home fans what I can do," he said.
Stanek wants to improve his appetite after the European Games
Tomáš Staněk also managed to win Golden Spike in the past, namely in 2017, when he mastered this meeting with a performance of 21.63. During this year's outdoor season, he has already made it further three times. He recorded his season performance of 21.71 right at his first start in Turnov. He will be starting at Golden Spike for the eighth time. "At Golden Spike, I would like to build on my performances from the beginning of the season. At the European Team Championships, I messed it up myself because I worried too much about my groin, but the race showed me that it's fine and I can go all out. The opponents are of extremely high quality, so there is certainly no shortage of motivation. I believe that a lot of fans will arrive and we will use their support for the best possible performances," he said.
However, it will be extremely difficult for him to win the second trophy. A number of elite rivals will stand in his way, led by the world record holder and also the holder of the meeting's all-time record, Ryan Crouser, who won the Golden Shoe in 2020 with a throw of 22.43. So far this year, he has completed two starts under the open sky. In Des Moines, he started with a performance of 22.38, and then in Los Angeles he pushed his own world record to 23.56. He has not raced since.
"After breaking the world record in LA, we decided to train a little more, so Ostrava will be a test of how I am at the moment. The journey was long, but I slept well and the training also looked great, so I am in anticipation and believe in breaking my meeting record," he hopes to improve this record. In addition to Crouser, another of the world's best shot putters in history, Tom Walsh from New Zealand, with an impressive personal best of 22.90, will also be in the sector. He maintains an extremely high standard even this year, when he already reached 22.22.
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