Libor Good Friday

Libor Good Friday
Libor Good Friday (r.) In Osaka 2007
nation	Slovakia
birthday	11th September 1977 (age 42)
place of birth	Trnava ,  Czechoslovakia
size	191 cm
Weight	117 kg
Career
discipline	Hammer throw
Best performance	81.81 m (June 29, 2003 in Prague )
society	Slávia Trnava
Trainer	Libor Good Friday Sr., Dave Wollman
status	resigned
End of career	29th August 2017
Medal table
World championships 0 × 0 × 1 × European championships 1 × 0 × 0 ×
World championships bronze Osaka 2007 81.60 m  European championships gold Barcelona 2010 80.02 m
last change: March 31, 2020

Libor Charfreitag (born September 11, 1977 in Trnava , ČSR ) is a former Slovak hammer thrower . He became European champion in 2010 and won a bronze medal at world championships in 2007 and also holds the Slovak record in this discipline.

Athletic career

Libor Charfreitag gained his first international experience in 1996 at the Junior World Championships in Sydney , where he was eliminated from the qualification with a width of 61.52 m. After beginning his studies at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas , he took part in the Summer Universiade in Palma de Mallorca for the first time in 1999 , where he finished eighth with 75.18 m, before taking 72.82 at the U23 European Championships in Gothenburg m reached fifth place. He also took part in the World Championships in Seville , where he did not reach the final with 70.20 m. The following year he qualified for participation in the Olympic Games in Sydney, where he did not reach the final with a throw on 72.52 m .

In 2001 he retired at the World Championships in Edmonton with 72.59 m once again in the qualification and then finished tenth at the Student World Games in Beijing with 69.49 m. In 2002 he took part in the European Championships in Munich for the first time and immediately made it to the final, in which he took seventh place with a width of 79.20 m. The following year he set a new Slovakian record on June 29 in Prague with 81.81 m and thus qualified for the World Championships in Saint-Denis near Paris, where he again failed to qualify with 76.52 m. Then he finished second behind the Hungarian Adrián Annus at the World Athletics Final in Szombathely with 81.22 m . In 2004 he took sixth place at the Olympic Games in Athens with a throw on 77.54 m in the final and was then fourth at the World Athletics Final in Szombathely with 76.99 m.

At the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 2005 , he finished eighth with a width of 76.05 m and then reached fifth place at the World Athletics Final in Szombathely with 76.59 m. The following year he took part in the European Championships in Gothenburg, but surprisingly failed there with 74.13 m in the preliminary round. In 2007 he made it to the podium in a major international competition at the World Championships in Osaka for the first time: with a width of 81.60 m, he won the bronze medal behind Belarusian Iwan Zichan and Primož Kozmus from Slovenia, after he had the distance with his sixth throw of the vice world champion 2005, Wadsim Dzewjatouski , could just surpass. He then finished fifth at the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart with 75.89 m. The following year he reached the finals at the Olympic Games in Beijing , where he finished eighth with a throw of 78.65 m.

In 2009 he reached tenth place at the World Championships in Berlin with 72.63 m in the final and the following year he celebrated his greatest success at the European Championships in Barcelona when he showed the only throw over 80 meters with 80.02 m and thus the gold medal won. This made him the first athlete to win a European open air championship for Slovakia. Then he also won the Continental Cup in Split with a throw of 79.69 m. In 2011 he took part again in the World Championships in Daegu , South Korea , where he was eliminated with 72.20 m in qualification, as well as at the European Championships in Helsinki in 2012 with 69.65 m. In the following years he missed participation in major championships, before qualifying again for the European Championships in Amsterdam in 2016 , where he was eliminated without a valid attempt in qualification. On August 29, 2017, he played his last competition at the Slovak Club Championships in his hometown Trnava with 61.82 m and thus ended his active sporting career after 21 years.

In 1998 and 1999 and from 2002 to 2011, Charfreitag was the Slovak hammer throwing champion every year. He studied at the Texas Southern Methodist University , where he now works as an assistant trainer. During his undergraduate studies, he earned the NCCA college championship title in 1998 and 2000. In addition to hammer throwing, he was also active in weight throwing and holds the European indoor best performance in this discipline with 25.68 m, set up on March 5, 2005 in Sterling .

Awards

• Athlete of the Year: 2003, 2004

Web links

Commons : Libor Charfreitag  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Libor Good Friday in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Libor Charfreitag in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )