Jan Železný

Biography Železný was born in Mladá Boleslav, Czechoslovakia. He won the silver medal in the 1988 Olympics and the gold medal at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympic Games. He won World Championship titles in 1993, 1995 and 2001.

Železný holds the world record of , set in 1996, and the World Championships record of , set in 2001. On 26 March 1997, in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he threw over the 90-metre barrier five times in a single meet. Until September 2020, he was also the only athlete to throw more than 95 metres with the new type of javelin, something he achieved three times. and is the former coach of Barbora Špotáková.

Four days after winning a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, Železný had a tryout as a baseball pitcher with the Atlanta Braves at Fulton County Stadium. Both Železný and the Braves treated the tryout seriously and not as a "publicity stunt" or "sideshow", though Železný had no baseball experience beyond throwing a ball at home with his young son.

International competitions