Who is Jan Zelezny, the greatest Javelin thrower of all-time?

Jan Zelezny was recently appointed the coach of Neeraj Chopra. He is the only Javelin thrower to have won the gold medal at the Olympics in three consecutive seasons. Zelezny is the only athlete to clock a Javelin distance of over 95-meter mark thrice. The 58-year-old broke his own world record for a whopping four times, ensuring he was his only competition.

Jan Zelezny was born in Mlada Boleslav of Czechoslovakia. Right from a young age, he was aligned towards Athletics. The Czech Republic thrower is widely regarded as the greatest Javelin thrower of all time. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, he took the world by storm by winning the silver medal in the Javelin throw in his very first appearance.

The Czech thrower dominated the 1990s and was one of the greatest athletes of the world at the time. In the period, he won a hat-trick of gold medals at the Olympics from 1992 to 2000. Additionally, Zelezny won the World Championships in three instances in 1993, 1995, and 2001 respectively.

Jan Zelezny's Javelin throw records

There was a change in the way the Javelin was designed in order to ensure the safety of the fans. Despite that, he was able to clock distances of over 95 meters every now and then. In a meet in 1997, Jan clocked distances of over 90 meters in five of his six attempts. 

Jan remained the only Javelin thrower till 2020 to clock a distance of over 95 meters in the new type of Javelin. Only Johannes Vetter is in the elite league apart from Jan. In 1996, Jan took the world by storm by setting a new world record with a mammoth throw of 98.48 meters.

He also holds the World Championship record to date with a giant throw of 92.80 meters. Jan was consistently the best Javelin thrower in the world for over 15 years from 1988 to 2003. He retired from the sport in September 2006. Barbora Spotakova and Vitezslav Vesely were coached by him.