Karolína Maňasová: The Rocket from Nový Jičín Rewriting Czech Sprint History

In a country whose athletics legacy is built on the towering achievements of Jarmila Kratochvílová — whose 1983 world records in the 400m and 800m remain untouched more than four decades later — it takes something genuinely special to move the needle in Czech sprinting. Karolína Maňasová is moving it. Born on November 26, 2003, in the Moravian city of Nový Jičín, the young sprinter who trains out of SSK Vítkovice in Ostrava has, in the span of just a few competitive seasons, become the fastest active Czech woman in the 100 metres, a national record holder in the 60 metres, an Olympic semi-finalist, a European U23 champion, and a fixture among Europe’s elite short sprinters. She is 22 years old.

Czech athletics media have taken to calling her the “rocket from Nový Jičín,” and the nickname fits. What Maňasová has done — and the pace at which she has done it — is the kind of sprint career development that tends to attract attention well beyond national borders.

Roots: Nový Jičín and the Road to Ostrava

Nový Jičín is a small city in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic, not far from the Polish border and the industrial heart of Ostrava. It is not a city typically associated with world-class athletics, which makes Maňasová’s emergence all the more striking. The specific details of her earliest introduction to the sport are not extensively documented in the public record, which is common for athletes who began competing long before they had any reason to attract national media coverage. What is clear is that she found her way to SSK Vítkovice, one of the most storied athletics clubs in Czech history, and began working with coach Ivo Pištěk — a relationship that has proved foundational to everything that has followed.

SSK Vítkovice, based in Ostrava, carries over a century of athletics tradition. The club has been a consistent producer of Czech national-level talent, and its facilities — including the indoor hall at Vítkovice that hosts the annual Czech Indoor Gala, one of the top-ranked World Athletics Indoor Tour meetings — provide athletes with elite training and competition environments that would be the envy of clubs in far larger cities. For a sprinter from Nový Jičín with ambitions beyond the local track, the move into Vítkovice’s system was the right one.

One glimpse into Maňasová’s personality off the track comes through her well-documented relationship with tattoos — specifically, with Egyptian mythology. Since seventh grade, she has worn Egyptian god charms as necklaces, calling them her talisman. “I never compete without them,” she has said. The devotion eventually found a more permanent form on her left arm, which now features two Egyptian gods prominently, with Anubis — the god of the dead and protector of souls — taking the most prominent position. Below the gods sits a dragon. The Chinese zodiac places her birth year of 2003 in the Year of the Goat, but Maňasová has her own explanation for choosing the dragon: “Because I’m a dragon when I step onto the starting blocks,” she laughed in one interview. On her right arm, she has added a single tattoo since Paris: the Olympic rings.

Breaking Through: 2022–2023

Maňasová’s competitive record at the senior level begins to take meaningful shape in 2022, when she posted a 200m personal best of 23.98 seconds — a time that, recorded in May of that year when she was still 18, indicated genuine sprint potential across the short sprint distances. Her 4x100m relay best of 44.29 seconds, set in June 2023, reflects her value as a relay contributor to the Czech national team, a role she has filled throughout her career.

The indoor season of early 2023 produced her first major national title. In February 2023, competing at the Czech Indoor Athletics Championships, she won the 60 metres — her first national title at any level, and one that announced her arrival as a serious figure in Czech sprinting. She was 19 years old. For a sprinter trained in Ostrava, winning a national title at the indoor track in the same city where she trains carried a particular significance, and it was a moment that Czech athletics observers noted as the beginning of something worth watching.

The Record-Breaking Year: 2024

If 2023 was a breakthrough, 2024 was the year Maňasová announced herself on the European and global stage in terms that could not be ignored.

The year began indoors in January 2024, when she competed at the Jablonec Indoor Meeting and clocked 7.23 seconds in the 60 metres — equalling the Czech national record that Klára Seidlová had set back in 2018. Matching a national record is one thing; what came next was something different entirely. A month later, at the Czech Indoor Athletics Championships in Ostrava in February 2024, Maňasová not only retained her national title but shattered the existing record, running 7.15 seconds to set an entirely new Czech standard. The performance immediately earned her qualification for the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow.

The Glasgow World Indoors in March 2024 was Maňasová’s first global championship appearance, and she ran 7.27 seconds in her qualifying heat — a solid performance at the highest level, though not enough to advance to the semi-finals. The experience of competing on that stage, however, is exactly the kind of learning that accelerates development in young sprinters.

The outdoor season of 2024 was where things truly caught fire. At the 2024 European Athletics Championships in Rome in June, Maňasová reached the semi-finals of the 100 metres — a significant result at a senior European championship — and ran 11.17 seconds, a new personal best at the time. The performance earned her immediate recognition in Czech athletics media as a genuine contender for major outdoor honours.

She then returned home to win the Czech national title in the 100 metres for the first time, finishing the final in 11.24 seconds — and, notably, running 11.21 in her qualifying heat to set a new Czech Athletics Championships record. She was simultaneously the Czech champion and the record-setter for the national championship itself.

Then came Paris.

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games represent a watershed moment in Maňasová’s career and, for that matter, in the history of Czech women’s sprinting. She qualified for the 100 metres, and in her heat on August 2, 2024, she ran 11.11 seconds — a new personal best, and a time that advanced her to the semi-finals. That semi-final berth was the first time a Czech woman had reached the Olympic 100 metres semi-finals in 76 years. The last to do it before Maňasová was Olga Šicnerová, who made the semi-finals at the 1948 London Olympics. Three-quarters of a century of Czech sprinting history, and then Maňasová at 20 years old in Paris, erasing it.

She finished the Games 24th overall. The number tells only part of the story. The time — 11.11 — and the history it represented told the rest. Czech athletics celebrated accordingly.

Speaking to Czech media after the achievement, Maňasová acknowledged the significance but also pointed clearly forward. She was well aware of where the Czech all-time 100m list stood: Jarmila Kratochvílová’s mark of 11.09 seconds, set in 1981, stood just two hundredths ahead of her Paris time. “I want that record,” she said flatly. “I’m a realist — I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it. I think that over time, I could still take those three hundredths off.” In the same breath, she noted she had no plans to tattoo her legs — she prefers to reserve the ink for milestones — but that she had plenty of space left on her arms if the results kept coming.

A New Indoor Record Frontier: Early 2025

The indoor season of 2025 arrived with Maňasová as perhaps the most watched Czech athlete in the women’s sprint events, and she delivered. In February 2025, she defended her Czech national indoor 60m title for a third consecutive year, running 7.17 seconds in Ostrava. Good, but she was already aiming higher.

The 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, in March gave her the stage to show just how far her 60m had developed. She qualified for the semi-finals with a time of 7.14 seconds — a new Czech national record and personal best, already an improvement on her previous indoor mark. Then, in the semi-final itself, she lowered it again to 7.10 seconds, making it twice in one day that she had set a new Czech 60m indoor record. She reached the final — placing in the top eight at a senior European Indoor championship, a first for her at that level.

The performance drew significant coverage in Czech media. One outlet described the day in Apeldoorn — three rounds of the 60 metres in a single afternoon, culminating in a European Indoor final — as “the hardest day of her career.” Her own assessment was characteristically understated: “I walked around like a pensioner the next day,” she said, laughing. “It’s the first time I’ve ever run three rounds in one day.” The previous morning she had traveled from Apeldoorn back to Ostrava, and by Tuesday she was already at the Czech Indoor Gala receiving her start number. The schedule of an elite sprinter in full season does not offer much recovery time.

European U23 Champion: Bergen, July 2025

The outdoor season of 2025 produced what may stand as the defining competitive result of Maňasová’s career to date. At the European Athletics U23 Championships held in Bergen, Norway in July 2025, she entered the 100 metres as the 2024 European leader in the U23 age group — and she left it as champion.

In the final on July 18, she ran 11.30 seconds into a headwind of -1.3 metres per second — conditions that routinely suppress times — and won the gold medal, holding off Great Britain’s Nia Wedderburn-Goodison (11.38) and Greece’s Polyniki Emmanouilidou (11.44). It was Czechia’s first gold medal of the Bergen championships, and it made Maňasová the first Czech sprinter in history — male or female — to win a European U23 100 metres title. A historic performance by any measure.

European Athletics described her as “untouchable in the sprints” at Bergen, a characterization that the results supported. The gold medal arrived just months after her indoor records in Apeldoorn, and it confirmed that the trajectory established since Paris was continuing upward.

She subsequently competed at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September, her second global championship appearance, gaining further experience at the sport’s highest outdoor level.

The 2026 Season: A New National Record and World Lead

Maňasová opened the 2026 calendar year in a fashion that suggested the ceiling is nowhere in sight. On January 20, 2026, competing in Ostrava, she ran 7.05 seconds in the 60 metres — a new Czech national record, her own previous mark of 7.10 surpassed by a margin that was immediately attention-grabbing. More significantly, the time placed her at the top of the world indoor rankings for the 60 metres at that point in the season — the fastest woman in the world over that distance, indoors, in 2026.

The reaction in Czech athletics was enthusiastic. Local media noted that she was now among the most prominent names in European short sprinting ahead of the 2026 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland — an event she identified as her primary target for the winter season. “The Czech Indoor Gala is my second biggest highlight after the World Indoor Championships in Toruń in the coming weeks,” she said ahead of the February Czech Indoor Gala. “This is home for me, and I love racing in a familiar environment.”

She was true to her word at the Czech Indoor Gala on February 3, 2026, finishing tied for third in the 60m in 7.17 seconds in a world-class field — behind European indoor champion Zaynab Dosso of Italy (7.09) and Luxembourg’s Patrizia van der Weken (7.14), with Great Britain’s Amy Hunt alongside her in third. The competition illustrated precisely the elite company she now keeps on a regular basis.

Then, on February 28, 2026, at the Czech Indoor Athletics Championships in Ostrava, she claimed her fourth consecutive national indoor 60m title, running a championship record of 7.11 seconds to extend her dominance of the event domestically.

She also set a new Czech national record of 6.18 seconds in the 50 metres at the Czech Indoor Gala on February 3, adding another national mark to a growing collection.

Personal Bests and Career Statistics

As of April 2026, Karolína Maňasová’s personal bests across her primary events stand as follows:

• 60 metres: 7.05 (Ostrava, January 20, 2026) — Czech national record
• 50 metres: 6.18 (Ostrava, February 3, 2026) — Czech national record
• 100 metres: 11.11 (Paris, August 2, 2024)
• 200 metres: 23.98 (May 22, 2022)
• 4×100 metres relay: 44.29 (June 24, 2023)

Her World Athletics ranking in the women’s 100m currently sits around 42nd in the world — a number that reflects her consistent placement among the sport’s elite, and one that will continue to move as she accumulates points at major competitions.

Her national title count stands at two outdoor Czech championships (100m: 2024; 60m: three consecutive titles) and four indoor Czech championships in the 60m (2023, 2024, 2025, 2026).

Where She Stands in Czech Sprint History

Context matters when evaluating what Maňasová has already accomplished. Czech women’s sprinting does not have a deep tradition of internationally competitive 100m runners. Jarmila Kratochvílová, while primarily known for her 400m and 800m achievements, also ran 11.09 in the 100m — a Czech record that has stood for more than four decades. To be the second-fastest Czech woman in history at the 100 metres, at age 20, with a declared intention to close that two-hundredth-of-a-second gap, is a position very few Czech athletes have ever occupied.

The 76-year gap she closed in Paris — between Olga Šicnerová’s 1948 Olympic semi-final and her own in 2024 — speaks to how rare genuine international-level sprint speed has been in Czech women’s athletics. Maňasová has compressed decades of stagnation in a single career arc that is not yet three full seasons deep.

Club, Coach, and Training Environment

SSK Vítkovice has been her competitive home throughout her senior career, and coach Ivo Pištěk has been her guide through the rapid development that has characterized the past several years. The club’s home environment in Ostrava — centered on the Vítkovice indoor hall, which hosts not just local competitions but world-class international meetings like the Czech Indoor Gala — means Maňasová regularly trains and competes in the same facility where she races against the continent’s best. That familiarity with an elite competitive environment is an underappreciated advantage for a developing sprinter.

The Czech Indoor Gala, which Maňasová considers almost a home meet given her Ostrava base, carries World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold status and routinely attracts Olympic champions and world record holders. The opportunity to run against that level of competition in a familiar hall, rather than only encountering it at major championships, accelerates the kind of adaptation to elite racing that shows up in championship performances.

Social Media and Public Presence

Karolína Maňasová maintains an Instagram presence under the handle @karolina_manasova, where she shares training content, competition moments, and glimpses of her personal life — including, inevitably, her growing tattoo collection. She is also on Threads under the same username. Her following in Czech athletics circles is substantial and growing, reflecting her increasing profile as the country’s foremost women’s sprinter.

No major commercial sponsorships have been publicly announced as of this writing, which is not unusual for an athlete at her stage — even one who has competed at the Olympics, won a European U23 title, and topped the world indoor rankings. As her results continue to build and her name becomes more widely recognized beyond Czech borders, brand partnerships in the athletic apparel and footwear space become an increasingly natural next step.

The Road Ahead

Karolína Maňasová turns 23 in November 2026, which means the Bergen U23 title in Bergen was the last European U23 championship she will be eligible for. The next step is senior European and global competition — a stage she has already visited, and on which she has already shown she belongs. The 2026 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń represent a natural near-term target. The outdoor schedule, including the European Athletics Championships and the ongoing World Athletics Diamond League circuit, offers opportunities for her to build the senior championship record that the U23 title has only begun to outline.

The 11.09 Czech record hangs just two hundredths ahead of her. She has said she wants it, and said it with the matter-of-fact conviction of someone who has already done several things that looked improbable until she did them. The Olympic rings are on her right arm. There is plenty of room left on her left.

Karolína Maňasová competes for SSK Vítkovice and represents Czechia internationally. Her World Athletics profile can be found under athlete code 14857218. She can be followed on Instagram and Threads at @karolina_manasova.