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A cool sight at the Mestský Stadion during the 64th Ostrava Golden Spike on Tuesday one of the popular European one-day athletics meetings was seeing world javelin record-holder Jan Zelezny strike up a pose right next to the throwing area for the event, dressed in his business-casual attire.
The Czechia legend is, of course, closely associated with the Ostrava Golden Spike as the meeting director and athletes in the past have spoken about how cool it is to compete in this event, where his impact is unmissable in his current role, but also as the meet record holder with 94.64m that he threw in 1996.
This time around, he had a ring-side view to watch his Indian ward compete too. In his fifth official event of 2025, Neeraj Chopra registered his third win.
He has bagged back-to-back titles as he backed up his Paris Diamond League success on Friday late night, with a quick turnaround at the home event of his legendary coach.
Neeraj won the event with a best mark of 85.29m that came in the third round.
The second place went to South Africa’s Douw Smit with a new Personal Best of 84.12m while two-time World Champion Anderson Peters took the third place with 83.63m.
After his Paris DL win, Neeraj spoke of a quick recovery with just over three days left for the Ostrava event, which he has had to miss in recent seasons.
But perhaps the presence of Zelezny as his coach now meant there was a special place in the calendar for Neeraj, who typically hasn’t competed with such turnaround time in recent seasons.
And with his own pet project – the NC Classic men’s javelin invitational – coming up next weekend in Bengaluru, Neeraj would have had good reason to not go all out.