An excellent shot put line-up headed by reigning European indoor champion Konrad Bukowiecki from Poland has been assembled for the Czech Indoor Gala, a European Athletics Indoor Permit Meeting, in Ostrava on 25 January.
Bukowiecki has already established an excellent competition record in Ostrava. He claimed victory at this meeting twelve months ago with 21.15m and he also surpassed the 21m line for the first time in his career outdoors at the prestigious and long-standing Golden Spike meeting in 2016, going out to a world U20 record of 21.01m.
Bukowiecki will face some high level opposition next week from home favourite and European indoor silver medallist Tomas Stanek. He improved the Czech record out to 22.01m (in excess of Bukowiecki’s lifetime best of 21.97m) last season and finished fourth at the IAAF World Championships in London.
The field also includes reigning world bronze medallist Stipe Zunic from Croatia, former European indoor medallist Ladislav Prasil from Czech Republic as well as two-time world indoor champion Ryan Whiting from the United States and Olympic fourth-placer Franck Elemba from Congo. All six throwers will have three attempts with the top four going through to the fourth round with one thrower eliminated in the next two rounds until just two throwers remain in the sixth round.
Another innovative concept will be on show in the pole vault with five teams - made up of one male vaulter and one female vaulter - in action: Czech Republic will have two pairs (Jan Kudlicka and Jirina Ptacnikova and Michal Balner and Romana Malacova) plus teams from Poland (Robert Sobera and Justyna Smietanka), Benelux (Menno Vloon and Fanny Smets) as well as an U20 team made up of Emmanouil Karalis and Amalia Svabikova. The pair with the highest overall total will claim the victory.
18th January 2018 09:26