Twice this year he has come to Czechia, and twice he has left as the winner – first from the Mattoni Half Marathon in České Budějovice, then from Olomouc, shining with his times at both. Jorge Blanco is no newcomer to the front of a race: he took the Spanish marathon title back in 2022 and finished 12th in the same discipline at the European Championships in Munich. In 2025 he added team silver with the Spanish squad at the European Running Championships, and at this year’s Europeans he placed 24th in the marathon. With a half marathon best of 1:01:45 from Valencia, he arrives in Ústí as the man everyone else has to answer.
Barcelona, February 2026, split his career in two. Jan Lukas Becker ran 1:01:20 there and moved in one afternoon into the company of the German distance elite – exactly where he wants to belong on a regular basis. His track bests stand at 13:37.30 for 5,000 m and 28:27.98 for 10,000 m, and on his marathon debut in Frankfurt in 2024 he came home in 2:15:20 as the first German. In Karlovy Vary this year he beat everyone except Damián Vích, and he currently holds third place in the EuroHeroes standings. If he fights in Ústí and improves on what he did in Karlovy Vary, the higher rungs are within reach.
There is a simple reason he wears number 1 in Ústí nad Labem: nobody in the field has a faster personal best in the last three seasons. And yet this will be Simon Boch’s very first RunCzech race. He became German champion over 10,000 m as long ago as 2017, won the Linz Marathon in 2023, and at the 2024 European Championships in Rome he represented Germany in the half marathon, finishing 31st. His half marathon best is 1:01:15; last December in Valencia he moved his marathon best to an excellent 2:08:55. This year he added 21st place at the European Championships in Birmingham – and a team silver medal in the same race.
1:00:40. The time he ran at the 2020 World Championships in Gdynia, where he finished 20th in a world-class field, is still the Ukrainian national record – and still the fastest personal best in the Ústí field. Bohdan-Ivan Horodyskyi is a six-time Ukrainian champion who has collected his titles across three disciplines: the half marathon, 10,000 m and the marathon, where his best is 2:10:14 (28:27.44 on the track). In 2025 he became Ukrainian half marathon champion and finished third overall in the EuroHeroes series, after taking second place in České Budějovice and fourth in Olomouc.
His speed comes from the track: 13:40.91 for 5,000 m, 7:55.42 for 3,000 m and 3:42.20 for 1500 m. Artur Bossy also has a long list of appearances at major events behind him – in 2019 he was part of the Spanish team that finished sixth in the mixed relay at the World Cross Country Championships. This season, though, he has shown that the road suits him too: in Karlovy Vary he took third place in 1:05:00 and after two races he was the second man in the EuroHeroes standings. He now lies fifth, and in Ústí he will be chasing more.
On the track he clears barriers, on the road he clears the field. Damián Vích has long combined the two, and in August 2025 in Oordegem, Belgium, he set a Czech record of 8:19.88 in the 3,000 m steeplechase. On the road his bests are 28:21 for 10 km and 1:02:52 for the half marathon, run in Berlin in March 2026. He has won the Mattoni Half Marathon Karlovy Vary twice in a row, in 2025 and 2026, and this year’s 1:03:30 also gave him the Czech course record there. In the EuroHeroes table he is the athlete with the second-highest points haul from a single race – it will be interesting to see how his run in Ústí helps his overall standing.
The 2026 season is the best of her career so far. In March in Warsaw, Hanne Mjøen Maridal ran a half marathon personal best of 1:10:50 – the fastest Norwegian time of the year – and she has 32:07 for 10 km and 32:23.20 for 10,000 m on the track, a distance at which she is also a Norwegian champion. She already knows the Czech roads: in June 2026 she took third place at the Mattoni Half Marathon in Olomouc in 1:12:26. At the European Championships in Birmingham she finished a fine 15th, and she could still have a big say in the overall EuroHeroes standings.
January in Valencia, a Czech 10 km record of 31:05 – and that was only the start. Tereza Hrochová has improved her marathon (2:25:58 in Seville) and her half marathon (1:10:52 in České Budějovice) in the same season. The two-time Olympian from Tokyo and Paris finished 9th in the marathon at this year’s European Championships, and in 2022 she was 17th in the same discipline at the World Championships. She has won EuroHeroes once already, in 2023 – she knows how that title feels, and it is certainly not leaving her cold this year either.
The last time she raced in Czechia was fifteen years ago – at the 2011 European U23 Championships in Ostrava. In the years since, Maor Tiyouri has run the marathon at three Olympic Games (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2021, Paris 2024), become a five-time Israeli champion, and finished 23rd in the marathon at last year’s World Championships in Tokyo, her best result at a world championship. Her bests: 2:26:39 for the marathon, 1:11:09 for the half marathon and 32:29 for 10 km, with 32:29.33 added over 10,000 m on the track this year. At the 2026 European Championships in Birmingham she was 12th in the marathon. Ústí will be her RunCzech debut.
She has already lifted the EuroHeroes trophy once: in 2024 she won the series outright, and she returns to Ústí with that experience behind her. Maryna Nemchenko is a two-time Ukrainian champion, with titles over 10,000 m and in the marathon. Her half marathon best is 1:11:13, set in Warsaw in 2024; this year she has brought her 10 km best down to 33:16 and run 16:19.23 for 5,000 m. In May she appeared in Prague as well, finishing third over 5,000 m in 16:23.14.
