European U23 100m champion Karolina Manasova from Czechia opened her 2026 season in excellent form in Ostrava on Tuesday (20) evening.
In her first competition since the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Manasova clocked 7.23 in the 60m heats before blazing to a Czech record of 7.05 in the final, also a world lead at this early juncture of the 2026 season.
"I think I had a pretty good start to the season. After the heat, my coach and I said that I could take about a tenth of a second off. When I evaluate the final itself, I think that the biggest progress is in the middle phase of the track. That's what my coach and I worked on the most in preparation, but we really didn't expect such a time in the first race," she said as quoted by Atletika.cz.
Still only 22, Manasova shaved 0.05 from her Czech record which she set in the semifinals of the 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn last year when she finished eighth in the final.
Her first big race of the season will be at the Orlen Cup in Lodz, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting, on Sunday.