The World Championship in Budapest was not supposed to be the pinnacle of the Japanese javelin thrower Haruka Kitaguchi’s career. Czech coach David Sekerák was preparing her for the next World Championship, which will be hosted by Tokyo in two years. Successes came earlier, last year Kitaguchi was bronze at the World Championships in Eugene and now she won the world title in a dramatic competition.
“I was aiming for Tokyo, not Budapest. For me, it is the peak and it will be difficult to follow it up now,” Sekerák told Czech journalists. At the next World Cup, special attention may be focused on Kitaguchi. Two dozen Japanese journalists spoke with her at length in Budapest as well. “Imagine what will happen in two years in Tokyo. We will have to buy a tank, bury it somewhere and hide there,” remarked Sekerák with exaggeration.
Especially in the qualification, he watched how his charge fought with nervousness in the role of favorite. “I told her – just keep calm, let one swing there,” he recalled the advice before the opening stage of the competition, from which Kitaguchi advanced on her second attempt.
Before the final, she didn’t want to have lunch at the hotel, so Sekerák took her to a Japanese restaurant. “Because I knew that she wouldn’t eat. We walked five hundred meters, she was in a great mood. We walked back well fed, they recognized her there. It was nice, it was different,” he praised.
And during the final, he was very nervous. “I knew it was there, that the 66 just had to be there. I say: ‘Come take a risk.’ It was there. She had a calf cramp on the first attempt, so it was a bit of a mess. We ordered her to start drinking to stretch. By the fourth (attempt), it was ready,” he recounted.
He appreciated that the twenty-five-year-old Japanese woman understands his instructions and is able to implement them. “She communicates, she knows. She also looks at the screen and then compares it a bit and waits from me to see if it’s what she thinks. I think she’s very good at this.”
In more than four years of cooperation, Kitaguchiová got used to Czech cuisine. “Svíčkovo, goulash, he eats it all,” Sekerák said. The Japanese spearmen built an apartment in his boarding house, where he has facilities during his stay in Domažlice.
“She has everything there, a washing machine, a dryer. She has to pay for the trash cans. She is registered, it all came from a foreigner,” explained Sekerák.
But Kitaguchiová does not have a Czech mentality, which is also why her coach is not afraid that today’s success would go to her head.
“We have to take her away from it a little, but those Japanese people are humble. That’s not just a Czech woman. I also raise my group like that, sometimes I have a problem with that, that I’m strict, that I’m punctual. I don’t like it when someone comes five minutes late later to practice, I throw people out of practice. That never happens here,” explained the coach.
Four years ago at the World Championships in Doha, the Czech javelin throwers threw the then young Kitaguciva in the qualification, and the Japanese woman then watched the final with Czech flags painted on her face. Now Czech coach Sekerák was celebrating in a t-shirt with the flag of the country of the rising sun.
Next year, he would also like to wear the Czech one at the top representative event. His protégé Petra Sičáková threw 60 meters and won the national championship in Tábor this year, but she did not make it to the World Championships due to her low ranking.
“I don’t want to comment on it in any way, but Petra should have been here. I think she was better prepared than all three girls, physically for sure. She would throw the 54 too and I think she would be surprised that she would certainly throw fifty-eight, nine. Just we didn’t make it in the ranking, that’s life. I hope that we will get there in Europe next year and defend the Czech flag as well,” he declared determinedly towards the continental championship in Rome in June.
In the Czech environment, Sekerák, who still has the promising spearman Jan Výška, does not have an easy position.
“I think that people who understand it are so supportive. But some of them are insidious. Just the day before yesterday, I dealt with a complaint against the union that they were complaining about me, anonymously to the union, that I train a Japanese woman and I am employed with union money, so you wanted to cry. Really, there’s filth and filth here, I’ll tell you straight,” he lamented.
2023-08-26 08:13:21
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