Height 1.94 m | Weight 84 kg | |
Radek Juška ( [ˈradɛk ˈjuʃka]; born 8 March 1993) is a Czech track and field athlete who competes in the long jump. He was a silver medallist at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in 2015, at which he set a best of 8.10 m (26 ft 6 3⁄4 in).
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Career
Raised in Starovičky, in the south-eastern Břeclav District, Juška made his international debut for the Czech Republic at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics. Despite having set a personal best of 7.71 m (25 ft 3 1⁄2 in) in June, he was far off this form at the competition and ranked 24th in qualifying with a best jump of 7.11 m (23 ft 3 3⁄4 in).
In 2013 he won the Czech under-23 titles in both the long jump and triple jump. He followed this up with his first senior national title at the 2014 Czech Indoor Championships. Outdoors, he was the long jump winner at the Josef Odložil Memorial in Prague (the country's foremost track meet) with a personal best mark of 7.94 m (26 ft 0 1⁄2 in). He had his senior international debut that year at the 2014 European Team Championships, clearing 7.76 m (25 ft 5 1⁄2 in) to take eighth place overall. He gained a wild card selection for the 2014 European Athletics Championships, but a torn abdominal muscle suffered at the national championships that year meant he was not fit to compete.
Under the tutelage of Josef Karas (a former decathlete), Juška was encouraged to focus on both his athletics and his studies at the University of Economics, Prague. He returned to fitness in time for the beginning of the 2015 season and claimed the Czech indoor title for a second time. He was selected for the home team for the 2015 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague. Despite entering as an outsider, having a sub-eight-metre personal best, he managed to qualify for the final of the event – the last of the eight qualifiers. In the final he was spurred on by the home crowd and improved his personal best to 8.10 m (26 ft 6 3⁄4 in) to claim the silver medal behind Michel Tornéus. This also raised him to seventh in the global seasonal rankings. He was one of three Czech athletes to win medals on the first day of finals at the championships, alongside Ladislav Prášil and Eliška Klučinová.