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Athletics - 14. August 2014.

©potáková digs deep to go one better than Jan

She was world champion seven years ago, has two Olympic titles and holds a world record which has stood for six years. It’s one of the most glittering records in world athletics. Yet until tonight Barbora Špotáková had never won gold at the European Athletics Championships.

The powerful Czech put that right with a fifth round throw of 64.41m in Zurich’s Letzigrund Stadium this evening, ending a 12-year quest stretching back over five championships to Munich 2002 and going one better than her legendary coach Jan Zelezny who won three Olympic and three world titles in his illustrious career, but never the European crown.

It was a fitting way for Špotáková to mark her so-far unbeaten comeback season after the 33-year-old took a well-earned maternity break last year following the birth of her son, Janek, her first child with partner Lukas Novotny – named, of course, after her coach.

After Jo Pavey’s 10,000m triumph on Tuesday, Špotáková made it another memorable night for mothers as, inspired by her son, she found one big throw to snatch gold after performing “bad, very bad” for four rounds.

It was with relief as much as joy that she ran to greet Zelezny in the stands. She took one-year-old Janek in her arms before setting off on a lap of honour with the Czech flag around her shoulders.

“I did it, I completed the titles,” said Špotáková after becoming only the second woman to win world, Olympic and European javelin titles. “I did it for my family and for my coach. Without them it wouldn’t have been possible. I am so excited.

“But I do not feel like dancing today despite the fact that I finally managed to win because I feel ashamed that I showed just one good attempt.

“My throws seemed really poor and I tried to do many things to improve – I also changed my spikes. But nothing helped.”

Ironically, perhaps, Špotáková’s path to gold was eased by the absence through pregnancy of two of her biggest rivals – Germany’s world champion Christina Obergföll and Russia’s former world champion Maria Abakumova, who are both skipping the season.

Eased it may have been, but never easy, for Špotáková still had to overcome the 2010 champion, Linda Stahl, who came to Zurich as the world number one after throwing 67.32m at the New York Diamond League meeting and led here for four rounds.

Špotáková must have thought history was repeating itself for Germans have been her nemesis at the European Athletics Championships. After not making the final in Munich, she won silver in Gothenburg eight years ago behind Steffi Nerius, and bronze in Barcelona when Stahl and Obergföll took gold and silver.

She threw 62.86 in the first round, but then struggled to find her rhythm, launching the spear too high into the cool air above the Letzigrund infield. It all changed in the fifth round as Tatjana Jelaca suddenly produced a Serbian record of 64.21 to take the lead.

Špotáková now found herself in third place, but she had waited too long for this moment to be denied now, and followed Jelaca’s effort with one of her own, the javelin sailing out to snatch the lead by 0.20. It wasn’t her best, not even her best of the year. But it was enough.

“It was a crazy competition because I was bad, very bad,” she said. “I had to find a power deep inside myself. I don’t know where it came from. I felt awful, I don’t know why, but thankfully I finally found it in the fifth round.

“My coach, Jan Zelezny, was almost falling down and fainting when he saw how I was throwing. It is such a big thing for both of us.

“I said to myself ‘Hey, this is maybe your last European Championships, the last chance in your life – it cannot end like this with such a bad performance.’

“Then Jelaca achieved the national record and I told to myself I have to push it harder. And it worked out. Now I have the full collection. I am so glad that I finally completed it and want to say thank you to all the people who were supporting me in my comeback after giving a birth to my son.”

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