Pavel Maslák

Pavel Maslak ( born February 21, 1991 Havířov ) is a Czech athlete, who competes on different sprint distances. As a Czech record holder and European champion, he celebrated his greatest successes in the 400 -meter run.

Maslak launched the age of sixteen at the IAAF World Youth Championships in 2007 in Ostrava over 400 meters, but already retired from the lead. Also at the Track World Junior Championships 2008 in Bydgoszcz, he could not qualify for the second round in the 100 -meter run. He scored his first major international success by winning the silver medal in the 4 x 100 -meter relay at the European Athletics Junior Championships 2009 in Novi Sad. At the Track Junior World Championships 2010 in Moncton, he was seventh in the 200 -meter run. About the same distance he won in the U23 European Athletics Championships Ostrava 2011 in the bronze medal and reached at the World Athletics Championships 2011 in Daegu the semifinal round.

2012 succeeded Maslak the final breakthrough in the active class. At the IAAF World Indoor Athletics Championships in Istanbul, he finished fifth in the 400 -meter run. The stadium round proved to as his strongest discipline. In the outdoor season, he improved the 34 -year-old Czech record over this distance in 45.31 seconds. A few weeks later he improved even at 45.17 seconds. His biggest success so far Maslak with a victory in the 400 - meter race at the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki. It was the first European Championship medal for Czechs in this discipline. With the Czech 4 x 400 - meter relay team, he finished in the finals despite a new national record of 3:02,72 minutes only sixth place. At the Olympic Games in London, he improved the national record in the run again: in 44.91 seconds he ran for the first time under 45 seconds. In the semifinals, however, it was the terminus for him.

In March 2013 Maslak in Gothenburg, Sweden European Indoor champion, with the 4 x 400 - meter relay team, he won the bronze medal. At the World Championships in Moscow, he finished fifth.

2014 won Maslak at the World Indoor Championships in the Polish Sopot his third international title in the 400 -meter run. He improved his own national indoor record of 45.24 s and simultaneously climbed in the European leaderboard to second place. Already at the beginning of the indoor season, he had put his good form proving he had broken the indoor European records over the rarely spilled 300 and 500 meters. When Flanders Indoor in Ghent, he improved in 32.15 seconds the old record of the Frenchman Leslie Djhone by 32 hundredths of a second. About 500 meters he was undercutting in Prague the European Indoor record of Israelis Donald Sanford in 1:00,36 minutes to half a second.