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In the final heptathlon event of the 2000 World U20 Championships, Barbora Spotakova occupied one of the podiums as the 19 surviving athletes moved from the stadium to the track at Santiago’s Estadio Nacional.
With a strong javelin throw of 54.15 meters, the Czech teenage multi-eventter moved into third place behind Sweden’s Karolina Kluft and Russia’s Lidiya Vasilikova-Nokulina.
With only seven points remaining, the young ‘Bala’ (as she was known to her teammates, family and friends) had to be passed by Sanna Saalman in the 800 meters to win the bronze medal. I didn’t go there. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
Kruft, 17, easily won the gold medal (6,056 points) and Vasilikova-Nokhulina the silver medal (5,898 points), but 19-year-old Spotakova narrowly missed out on third place.
She finished fifth in the third and final 800-meter heat with a time of 2:24.30, 2.10 seconds behind Saalman for first place. The Finns won the bronze medal with 5,707 points. Spotakova placed 4th with 5,689 points.
Like Kluft, “Bala” was also supposed to become one of the all-time greats in track and field, but not as a multi-event player. All six of her appearances at the Senior World Athletics Championships were as a javelin thrower. Although she finished ninth at her last competition in Doha in 2019, she chose to donate her singlet, personalized bib and throwing shoes to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
We are delighted that MOWA has received this award. Because the former all-rounder in track and field, and the almost female heptathlon athlete at the 2000 World U20 Championships, has won three world titles and established herself as the undisputed queen of the javelin throw. Because it’s established. She won two Olympic gold medals and set a world record of 72.28 meters, which remained unbroken for 15 years.
Barbora Spotakova’s best from the 2019 World Championships (© MOWA)
“Every fairy tale comes to an end”
The first of Spotakova’s five world championship successes came in 2007 in Osaka. At the same World Athletics Championships, Kluft bid farewell to his heptathlon career at the age of 24, completing a hat-trick of world titles and adding to the Olympic gold medal he won. in Athens in 2004.
Remarkably, Spotakova was still a major championship medalist despite being a 41-year-old mother of two young boys. She announced her retirement from international competition after winning a stunning bronze medal at the 2022 European Athletics Championships in Munich.
“Every fairy tale comes to an end. In my case, I had a wonderful happy ending with a bronze medal at the European Championships in Munich, symbolically closing the circle,” Spotakova announced at a press conference in Prague last September. did.
Although she has taken a break from the international circuit to focus on raising her two sons, Yanek, now 10, and Dalek, 5, the women’s javelin thrower is not yet ready to hang up the spear for good.
In 2023, at the age of 42, she finished 2nd at the Czech Championships and 6th at the Golden Spikes in Ostrava, throwing a season-best 60.32 meters, placing her 44th in the world rankings and 19th in the European rankings. I got it.
Of course, everything could have been very different if Spotakova had chosen to remain in multi-sport competition, instead of gaining the singular focus she so craved for the rest of her career as an injury-plagued long jump specialist. It might have been. Triple jump.
Barbora Spotakova in Osaka, 2007 (© Getty Images)
switch to javelin throw
Spotakova’s father, Frantisek, was a decathlete, and her mother, Lyudmila, was also an athlete and coach.
At the age of 14, Barbora moved from her parents’ home in Jablonec nad Nisou in the northern Czech Republic to study at the sports school Pripotokny Gymnasium in Prague. Spending her teenage years in the Czech capital, she spends some of her spare time earning money as a cleaner, and she likes drinking beer in pubs and listening to punk bands. became.
Still, Spotakova continued her studies and under the tutelage of coach Rudolf Černý, she emerged as a talented track and field all-rounder, finishing runner-up in the Czech Under-20 indoor pentathlon in 1999.
Outdoors, the following year she placed 9th in the multi-star heptathlon in Desenzano, won the Combined Events International in Hexham and was 3rd in the Czech Championships in Prague. , increasing his personal record to 5,873 points. She easily won the bronze medal at the U20 World Championships in Chile.
The 2001 season was a turning point for Spotakova. She again took third place at the Czech Championships and seventh place at the European Athletics Championships in Maribor, but she could not get off to a good start and she recorded her best score of the year, 5414.
Spotakova began focusing on javelin throwing during a one-year stay at the University of Minnesota in 2001-2002, when she won the Big Ten heptathlon title in Madison, Wisconsin with a score of 5,400. .
After that, she competed in the heptathlon only two more times, twice finishing in a prestigious fourth place at the end of the season at the Decasters competition in Talence in 2004 and 2012, the latter of which earned her a lifetime He received the highest score of 5880 points.
After winning the silver medal in the javelin throw with 56.76 meters at the Czech Championships in Ostrava in 2002, Spotakova began her major championship career in this arena, ending it 20 years later. Unfortunately, he failed to advance to the finals at the European Championships in 2018. Olympiastadion in Munich.
Surprisingly, given the success she continued to enjoy at world level, Spotakova has only won two European Championship titles: in Zurich in 2014 and in Amsterdam two years later, as well as in 2006. He won silver in Gothenburg and bronze in Barcelona in 2010 and Munich last time out. Year.
Barbora Spotakova races for European javelin gold medal in Zurich (© Getty Images)
But this is a continental feat won by his illustrious compatriot Jan Zelezny, who replaced Cerny as coach, during his pioneering career as a three-time world champion, Olympic javelin champion and world record breaker. That was more than two crowns.
In total, Spotakova won gold medals at five world championships, the first of which came at the 2007 world championships in Osaka, Japan. She threw 66.40 meters and 67.07 meters in the final, defeating Germany’s favorite Christina Obergfoll and breaking the Czech record twice.
Her golden record continued at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where she snatched the record and victory in the final round with 71.42 meters. This moved the Czech to second place on the world record after Osleidis Menéndez’s 71.54m, but in the last competition of the year, the World Athletics Finals in Stuttgart, she broke the Cuban athlete’s world record. . She boasts an amazing distance of 72.28 meters.
Director Zelezny
Spotakova won the silver medal behind Germany’s Steffi Nelius at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but in 2011, under the guidance of Zelezny, she won the world title in Daegu with a throw of 71.58 meters, the second best of her career. was recaptured.
Her other two world titles, both won five years apart in London, were the 2012 Olympics and the 2017 World Championships. She also won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics, becoming the first woman in history to win three Olympic medals in the javelin throw.
Barbora Spotakova throwing the javelin at the 2012 London Olympics (© Getty Images)
Despite taking time off to give birth to her sons in 2013 and 2018, Spotakova was able to maintain her medal-winning form in major championships until the end of her marathon career.
In 2021, she participated in the Olympics for the fifth time, narrowly missing out on the finals at the Tokyo Games, but a year later in Munich, she threw 60.68 meters to win the 2022 European Championships, and at the age of 41, she won the bronze medal. She is second only to Greek teenager Elina Tsenko and Serbian Adriana Viragos.
The former all-round track and field athlete said, “I hope I’ve proven that I can last a long time in the javelin throw.” “I hope I can prove that my technique looks easy, just like you don’t have to be a weightlifter or a very strong person.”
That Spotakova happens to be a source of inspiration became clear when Haruka Kitaguchi won the world title in Budapest in 2023.
When asked which javelin thrower he most admires and whose performance he has studied the most, a Japanese javelin thrower training in the Czech Republic said:
“I love Barbora Spotakova. I’m very happy to be training in her country, the Czech Republic.”
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