For the first time, the Running Festival took place in České Budějovice, which included the traditional Mattoni České Budějovice Half Marathon.
And the new format proved to be very successful. The dm family mile and bambini run welcomed 2200 participants, over 500 people took part in the new 5 km race.
"We are very happy that shorter distances attract the public so much,” said Carlo Capalbo, president of the RunCzech organizing committee.
“It is a good signal that people are interested in running. We managed to fill the whole square and people enjoyed a sporty sunny day."
The main race was attended by 2,900 people, which represented full capacity. The best runner in the České Budějovice Half Marathon was Sebastian Hendel from Germany.
At the beginning he was in a group of several men, but before the halfway point he was running all alone. He ran the South Bohemia half marathon brilliantly with a promise to break the European record of the race.
However, he missed it by half a minute, but the time of 1:03:38 is a great performance. "I'm really happy that my winning streak in RunCzech races continues,” added Hendel, who took an ideal step towards defending the title of EuroHeroes, a RunCzech project supported by European Athletics aimed at developing Europeans running talent.
“I tried to break the time under one hour and three minutes. It was good at the tenth kilometre, but as time went on it got worse, and my legs were hurting.
“It was a great experience, I enjoyed my first start in České Budějovice and when I was running back to the square, many people were cheering my name. It was a really great atmosphere."
The second place went to Italian Daniele D'Onofrio, the third place went to Ukrainian Mykola Mevsha, who improved his personal best significantly. The best Czech runner was Patrik Vebr (1:08:38), who beat Petr Pechek and Tomáš Křivohlávek.
"Although I don't really like to run races in training pace, I chose this strategy for today,” Vebr summed up. “My coach and I decided to do it mainly for health reasons and also because of the upcoming track races.
“But the overall assessment is positive and I am glad that especially my health is holding up." The fastest women was Maryna Nemchenko from Ukraine, who ran a significant part of the race alone trying to catch some men to help her pace. "If I had run with another female competitor, it would have been easier, running alone is hard”, Nemchenko assessed after the race.
“I always tried to catch up with whoever was ahead of me, I'm satisfied." The Ukrainian surpassed the best European race time of Tereza Hrochova from 2022 by half a minute.
Her compatriot Nataliya Semenovych finished second, while Moldova's Lilia Fisikovici finished third. Hana Homolkova succeeded in a close battle between the Czech competitors, beating Aneta Císařová. Tereza Jagošová finished third.
