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Jan
Zelezny: the top javelin thrower
Zelezny
was born in Prague, on 16 June 1966. He is the greatest javelin
thrower in the history of the Olympic Games having won one
silver and  three
gold medals in four consecutive Games. He is considered by
many the greatest javelin thrower of all times, whereas experts
maintain that thanks to him it was made clear that the javelin
is not so much a contest that requires strength, but mostly
speed and technique. It seemed natural for Zelezny to take
up the javelin, seeing that he grew up in a family of javelin
throwers. Both his father and mother were javelin champions
in their country. So was his older brother.
Nevertheless, Jan Zelezny began his sports activity showing
an inclination to team sports, such as football, hockey on
ice and handball, and became involved in the javelin at the
age of 15, after a serious injury. During a handball game
he threw the ball with so much strength that he injured the
opponent goalkeeper. As a result he decided to quit team sports
and turn to athletics and to the javelin.
His first important international distinction came in 1987,
when he won the first place in the world championship. In
the same year he set his first world record. A year later,
in the Seoul Olympics, he was considered the favourite and
made certain to verify these estimations in the preliminaries,
where he set a new Olympic record, but not in the final, where
he came second losing the gold medal in the last throw to
Finnish Tapio Korjus. In the following years he failed to
qualify for the finals of the two important organizations,
namely the European championship of 1990 and the world championship
of 1991. So, in the Barcelona Olympics he did no longer bear
the title of the favourite. This time he made it to the final,
albeit in a less spectacular way than in Seoul. He was spectacular
in the final, though, when by the first throw he broke his
own Olympic record and won his first gold Olympic medal.
In 1993 and in 1995 he won once again the title of the world
champion setting the foundation for the second gold medal
in the Olympics, which he did win in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Therefore he became the third javelin thrower in the history
of the Games to achieve two victories in a row. Four years
later in Sydney he would win his third gold medal, leaving
behind him, once again, his biggest opponent throughout the
1990s, the British Steve Backley, and would become the only
javelin thrower with three gold medals in successive Olympic
organizations.
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