Viktorie Janska

Happy birthday to Czechia’s Viktorie Jánská, who won a national senior title in her home city thirteen days ago.

On 25 July, at the Czech Senior Outdoor Championships in Plzeň, hosted by her own club at her own track, Viktorie ran 14.01 over the 100m hurdles for a lifetime best over the full senior barriers, and then went out and won gold in the 4x100m relay in 46.08. A senior national title, at home, on the same afternoon as a personal best, two weeks before her twentieth birthday.

That 14.01 is the top of a very clean staircase: 14.10 in September, 14.04 in July, 14.01 last week. Hurdlers moving up from the 76.2cm junior barriers to the full 83.8cm senior height usually lose a chunk of time and spend a couple of seasons getting it back. Viktorie has spent that transition period improving instead. She also won the 100m hurdles outright at the European DNA U20 Clubs meeting in Leiria, Portugal, in September, which is a genuine international win on foreign soil.

She has been at AK Škoda Plzeň since she started athletics at eight years old, when she was a multi-eventer rather than a hurdler, and she is coached by Adriana Ujkanovičová. She is a five-time Czech U18 champion, she has EYOF bronze medals from Banská Bystrica in the long jump and from Maribor in the medley relay, and she holds a share of four Czech age-group relay records. The best of them is not the fastest: in June 2023 she and three teammates ran 46.64 for the club and equalled, to the hundredth of a second, a Škoda Plzeň club record set by the women who came before them in 1993. Thirty years, matched exactly.

Všechno nejlepší k narozeninám, Viktorie! Hodně štěstí, zdraví, lásky a ještě spoustu rychlých překážek. Na zdraví! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇨🇿