Shot putter Tomáš Staněk was very disappointed after failing to qualify for the World Championship. He made a lot of sacrifices to succeed in this major event, he was not even able to attend the birth of his son.
His hopes were dashed when, after an hour of rain, he sent the ball just 20.41 meters to finish sixteenth.
“Overall, I sacrificed the birth of my son for this trip. Now it’s getting harder and harder and I’m probably going to bite it for a while,” Staněk said. His son Filip was born at the end of July at a time when he was racing to get ready for Budapest.
Back home, the offspring can cause him to change his mind. “It will probably be better, now other ideas certainly fit,” said the 32-year-old Czech representative.
On Friday, there was no indication that qualifying would be delayed by a storm. “I checked yesterday that it must be raining lightly. I had about twenty percent rain, so Google didn’t really estimate,” Staněk said.
In the morning, the situation seemed much worse than expected. “We got to warming up, I could see the clouds all around and it was blowing from there. Then everyone was just looking on the radar to see how big it was going to get. I knew it was going to rain, but I was hoping it would just be light, like when I was jogging, and they could drop the competition. It wouldn’t matter,” Staněk reflected.
But in the end, the rain was so heavy that it was impossible to compete regularly. The organizers have shifted the full program by one hour. Players found out at the last minute. “If we had known a little earlier, we would have warmed up differently,” Staněk muttered.
And then he couldn’t handle the situation. “When you’re warming up and waiting for an hour, working with the body is all the more difficult. It’s a shame for the first attempt. If I had extended the kick and gone under the ball, it could have been solved. But it’s not the way of playing and the counters weren’t enough,” he explained.
He went more cautiously on the second attempt. “The kick was slow, it didn’t move me, the ball stayed in my hand and it fell. I probably should have gone like the first one. But you don’t want to step on it… The one hour break didn’t help my legs and I couldn’t handle it completely,” commented the longest try. The third was half a meter shorter.
The lap was a little slippery after the rain, some competitors paid for it. “You have to be even more careful. It’s tough conditions, but it’s the World Cup and it’s about who can and who can’t deal with it. The conditions are the same for everyone.” , Stanek added.
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