European Athletics (EAA) – News – Czech stars out in force in Prague

The European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meeting, the 18th Josef Odlozil Memorial in Prague on Monday, will showcase many of the Czech stars who will compete for their team at the SPAR European Team Championships this coming weekend. 

The 2008 Olympic Games javelin champion and world record holder Barbora Špotáková, after three competitions, is still looking for her first win of the year and will face Germany’s Katharina Molitor, who was fourth at the 2010 European Athletics Championships.

The 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships 400m gold medallist Denisa Rosolová, after two good second place finishes over one lap of the track in Ostrava and Oslo recently, drops down to 200m.

She will come up against the Ukraine pair of Yelizaveta Bryzgina, Darya Pizhankova and the very good Russian Yuliya Chermoshanskaya.

Zuzana Hejnová, the second fastest woman in Europe this year who also won at the Samsung Diamond League meeting in Oslo last week, will have another opportunity to impose her superiority over Russia’s reigning European champion Natalya Antyukh.

High jumper Jaroslav Bába, the 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships 400m silver medallist, faces Ukraine’s former world champion Yuri Krymarenko and also the strong Greek duo of Konstadínos Baniótis and Dimitrís Hondrokoúkis, the latter having recently cleared 2.31m.

Czech 100m hurdles record holder Lucie Skrobáková will be aiming for another outing under 13 seconds after her run of 12.95 a week ago while 2010 European Athletics Championships 800m finalist Lenka Masná up against Russia’s Svetlana Klyuka and Tatyana Andrianova as well as Slovakia’s Barcelona fourth place finisher Lucia Klocová.

In the men’s 400m hurdles, Barcelona finalist Josef Prorok will have two tough opponents in the shape of Greece’s 2006 European Athletics Championships gold medallist Periklis Iakovakis and the rapidly improving British hurdler Jack Green, who is still only 19 but improved to 49.48 at the European Athletics Outdoor Classic Meeting in the German town of Kassel last week.

Russia’s world leader Aleksey Zagorniy and Slovakia’s 2010 European Athletics Championships gold medallist Libor Charfreitag are the main names in what should be an excellent men’s hammer competition, which also features Hungary’s Krisztián Pars and Germany’s Markus Esser.

Another European champion, Russian steeplechaser Yulia Zarudneva, is scheduled to have her first race over the barriers this year while Latvia’s Maris Urtans is the favourite in the men’s shot put.

The event in the Czech capital is the third of nine European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meetings in 2011.

Further details of all European Athletics Outdoor Meetings can be found here:

https://www.european-athletics.org/calendar-meetings-2011.html

European Athletics (EAA) – News