Teresa Tomanova

Happy birthday to Czechia’s jumper and trainee pilot Terka Tomaňová, who describes herself, in her own words, as athlete and pilot.

Terka set a long jump personal best of 5.65m at Olomouc in June, the clearest forward step of her season, and in May at Kladno she equalled her lifetime high jump best of 1.66m. She is a genuine all-rounder across the jumps and the sprints: 13.10 over 100m and 26.61 over 200m in June at Vlašim, 16.48 over the 100m hurdles at Kladno, and a Czech Secondary School Cup multi-event score of 2,834 points. Long jump, high jump, hurdles and flat sprints in a single season is four different technical problems, and she works on all of them.

But the line in her bio is the thing. Athlete and pilot. There are perhaps a handful of athletes anywhere in the world who fly aircraft, and the overlap between the two disciplines is more real than it sounds — both are about doing a precise sequence correctly under pressure, in a narrow window, where the difference between right and nearly right is enormous. A long jumper hits a board eight centimetres wide after a twenty-metre run-up. A pilot lands on a number. The temperament is the same temperament.

She competes across Central Bohemia, at Kolín, Čáslav, Kutná Hora, Nymburk, Kladno and Vlašim, and her profile carries both the Czech and American flags along with an aeroplane. Whatever the flying is taking her toward, still jumping personal bests, and building two careers at once.

Všechno nejlepší k narozeninám, Terko! Hodně štěstí, zdraví a lásky — a ať ti to jde nahoru i dopředu, na doskočišti i ve vzduchu. Na zdraví! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇨🇿