Czech Athletics Head Coach: World Championships a Failure, Injury Numbers Also a Concern

The Czech national athletics team's performance at the World Championships in Birmingham was a failure, head coach Pavel Sluka has admitted. According to him, out of 37 athletes competing individually plus two relay teams, only four managed to hit season's-best personal records at the peak of the season — and even two of those come with caveats: long jumper Petr Maindlschmied competed after an injury, while race walker Eliška Martínková ran a half-marathon for the first time.

The coach noted that warning signs had already appeared at the Czech national championships, where the athletes' form fell short of expectations ahead of the year's main event. "They didn't confirm the level of readiness they had going in — that's the root of the failure. It seems most of the team simply didn't nail the final stage of preparation," Sluka said.

Medals and the "Second Wave" of Athletes

The coach stressed that the final assessment always centres on medals, but he's also concerned about the results of the team's "second wave" — those not competing for podium finishes. Before Kristýna Sasínek Mäki's final, only four Czech athletes had made it into the top 8 of their events at the championships, and Sluka is unhappy with that figure as well.

The Injury Problem

The coach also drew particular attention to the large number of athletes competing while injured, including major talents such as Tomáš Jarvinen and Petr Maindlschmied, while Lourdes Gloria Manuel missed the entire previous summer due to injury. Sluka suggested this could partly be the price of increased training loads as athletes move up from junior to senior categories, though decisions on training methodology remain up to personal coaches.

"Top-level athletics operates right at the edge of what the body can handle, and training has to reflect that. Anyone who doesn't train that way won't make it into the elite. But the number of injuries certainly concerns me, and we intend to look into it," the head coach said.

Contrast With the Junior Team

Sluka admitted he's troubled by the contrast between the junior national team's successes — which has regularly brought home medals from major tournaments in recent years — and the senior team's results. "I expected that to start showing more strongly in the senior team too. We had a squad of experienced athletes, but we also gave young athletes a chance to feel the scale of top-level competition. The fact remains, though, that throughout the championships we felt smothered under a blanket we simply couldn't break through," the coach admitted.

Speaking about the concurrent European Swimming Championships, where Czech swimmers have been winning medals and breaking national records, Sluka noted that athletics could well learn from its fellow sport — joint educational programmes for coaches across different disciplines already exist, he said, and could be expanded further.

Around Prague, based on reporting by sport.cz