DIRECT FROM PARIS | Long-distance runner Radek Juška saved the season, and he didn’t even need a tartar for that. After problems in the middle of the year, he devoted himself to hard work and renunciation on the verge of injury, and in the Olympic qualification he was rewarded with a long jump of 815 centimeters, with which he was one of only two competitors to meet the final limit. To celebrate, he hugged coach Josef Karas wildly. And in Paris he got something better – kisses from his girlfriend who flew to Paris to surprise him.
He definitely has it in his legs. Radek Juška has been one of the aces of Czech athletics for decades, one of the few fighters who can think about the finals of global events. Last year at the World Championships in Budapest, it was seventh place. And now the certainty of his first Olympic final, which awaits him on Tuesday night.
You didn’t do very well in the season, did you feel such a performance in yourself?
“I have that performance in me. I believed I could give him. But this was brilliant…”
What were the first emotions like hugging coach Josef Karas?
“It was a great emotion, after eight years again at the Olympics and straight to the finals. It had to go out. There was no point, it just worked. We haven’t said anything yet. I think there was definitely some reserve there when transitioning to the plank in the last step.”
In the qualification, Radek Juška exactly met the limit for participation in the Olympic final with a jump of 815 centimeters
So far this year you haven’t done very well, where did the improvement come from?
“It was difficult, especially in the first half of the season. I started on Diamantovka (in Doha) for 794 and then it suddenly stopped. So I was wondering what’s going on. We tried different blood tests, we finally found that when I was in the Canaries, through some health problems, we didn’t quite do the work that was needed in terms of speed. That was probably the catch. After Europe, it was almost two months of sacrifice and hard work, I won’t lie. I fell flat on my face, but it was worth it.”
What have you been working on?
“Rather, we needed to finish the work that we didn’t do at the beginning of the season, which you draw on afterwards. So we were twice at the training camp in Harrachov, when it is, in quotation marks, alpine training. You run up a bunch of stairs there, all at speed. We talked a lot with the coach, that there is really enough. He says: Well, either you can do it and it’ll work out, or you can’t and you’ll get hurt. So it was really on the edge. But if a person wants to perform, he probably can’t go to the edge at such a competition.”
How about the fact that the final limit of 815 centimeters was jumped by only you and Tokyo Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglu?
“I certainly expected that half of the final field would give eight hundred and fifteen. If only compared to how it was jumping (at the European Championship) in Rome, when it was enough to reach the final, the most that I can remember in history. It might be because a lot of people were preparing for Rome, but since then there was an awful lot of time, they could tune in here as well. I myself am an example of this, when a person toils all season for some top race and then fails in it. I’ll give the example of Berlin 2018, when I went there as a favorite and it didn’t work out at all, so it could be exactly the same.”
How do you like the track at the Stade de France?
“I think it’s an extremely fast mondo, but it’s not hard. It seems to really return the energy, it’s not like you’re running on hard concrete. I think it will suit a lot of people.’
What do you have planned for Tuesday’s finale?
“Now I have to at least have a massage, my hips are a little stiffer. And then to my girlfriend, who came to surprise me. She showed up yesterday, I had no idea she would arrive. She said she would see how it worked out for her. In the evening, she suddenly wrote to me that she was going to training, that she would write afterwards. It started like drilling for me. And then she wrote that she was in Paris, so she came to the village to welcome me at least a little. It was about ten in the evening, I was more or less ready for bed, so it was just a hug and a kiss. And then back, unfortunately one cannot completely waste that time.”
