Josef Matoušek (7 September 1928 – 11 May 2019) was a Czechoslovak

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

athlete known primarily for the

hammer throw The hammer throw (HT for short) is one of the four throwing events in regular outdoor track-and-field competitions, along with the discus throw, shot put and Javelin throw, javelin. The hammer used in this sport is not like any of the tools a ...

Life and career

He was born in Žampach in

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

. He represented his native country at the

Athletics at the 1964 Summer Olympics At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the athletics competition included 36 events, 24 for men and 12 for women. The women's 400 metres and women's pentathlon events were newly introduced at these Games. There were a total number of 1016 partic ...

finishing ninth. At the time he made it to the Olympics, he was 36 years old. A year before the Olympics, he threw his personal best of 68.78 m,Josef Matoušek's profile at Sports Reference.com
/ref> and later that season after his 35th birthday he threw 66.82 m which became the Masters M35 world record. Had he been able to put together another 68 meter throw in the Olympics it would have made a bronze medal. He also competed at the

1962 European Athletics Championships The 7th European Athletics Championships were held from 12–16 September 1962 in the JNA Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia). Contemporaneous reports on the event were given in the ''Glasgow Herald''. Just before the m ...

. He died in his home in the village of

Častolovice Častolovice () is a market town in Rychnov nad Kněžnou District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,700 inhabitants. Etymology The name is derived from the personal name Častolov, meaning "the village of Často ...

References

1928 births 2019 deaths Olympic athletes for Czechoslovakia Czechoslovak male hammer throwers Athletes (track and field) at the 1964 Summer Olympics Czech male hammer throwers People from Ústí nad Orlicí District Athletes from the Pardubice Region Czechoslovak Athletics Championships winners {{CzechRepublic-athletics-bio-stub