Georgia Hunter Bell’s glorious summer continues to take her to fresh summits. The 32-year-old was simply sublime as she demolished a decent European 1500m field to add another title to her swelling collection.
It proved to be the final gold British medal of these championships, as Britain agonisingly missed out on coming top of the medal table to Italy by the slimmest margins.
First Jazmin Sawyers failed to win long jump gold by a centimetre to Larissa Iapichino of Italy. Then, in the final race of the championships, Italy’s Lorenzo Benati held off Britain’s Charlie Dobson by 0.03sec in the men’s 4x400m relay.
It meant that Italy finished top with 10 gold medals, one ahead of the British team, but it still marked an excellent effort on a thrilling final day.
Hunter Bell led from the front. As expected, the women’s 1500m turned into a slow and tactical race. But in the last lap burn up, Hunter Bell truly ignited. Her 58.44sec final 400m took her 10 metres clear as she crossed the line in 4:07.78.
No wonder when she crossed the line she applauded herself for a job well done.
“That last 150m is always my favourite part of the race, and it was really nice to come down the home stretch and know that I had it,” said Hunter Bell, who finished a second clear of Poland’s Klaudia Kazimierska, with Portugal’s Patricia Silva taking a surprise bronze.
Over the past five months, Hunter Bell has won world indoor 1500m gold, 800m Commonwealth Games gold, and the European title. She now believes she can add a fourth to her collection at the Ultimate Championships in Budapest next month.
Soon afterwards Sawyers jumped an outdoor long jump personal best of 6.99m to win silver against a high-quality field. It was all the more impressive given that she sustained a serious achilles injury 18 months ago. But she fell tantalising short of Iapichino, who jumped seven metres. France’s Hilary Kpatcha finished with a leap of 6.98m.
Two more silvers for Britain quickly followed in the women’s and men’s 4x400m as Britain finished with 19 medals.
As seven days of action in Birmingham came to an end with Mondo Duplantis taking pole vault gold in 6.15m, Jack Buckner, the chief executive of UK Athletics, hailed the European Championships as a huge success.
Buckner said that he was particularly pleased that Friday night’s epic 800m final starring Keely Hodgkinson, Audrey Werro and Femke Broeders-Bol had attracted around four million viewers on BBC One as he insisted his sport had cut through into the mainstream.
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“Everyone is absolutely delighted with the BBC numbers,” he said. “I heard it was 3.8m but that was without iPlayer. So they’ve been talking over four million on Friday night, which is really strong. So we are absolutely delighted and everyone is buzzing.
“This is a big sport that cuts through with big stars and that’s what we want. We want big heroes and big names doing amazing things.”
“Another star emerged here in Amy Hunt, which is fantastic for the sport,” he added. “Keely, in the way she conducts herself and the way she handles herself, is a role model. And then you look at all of them in the 4x100m relays and you just go ‘that’s what we want this country to be’.
Buckner also hinted that Britain was tempted to bid again in the near future, with the rebuilt stadium at Crystal Palace a potential option. “It’s been absolutely fantastic,” he said. “We loved doing it. We learn a lot. We think we could do it better and we’re going to do it again.”
Buckner also defended the struggles with ticket sales at the start of the week – and said that UKA had sold nearly three-quarters of all tickets in the 23,000-capacity Alexander Stadium.
“In the buildup we did work with schools and we did work with community groups, and overall we’ve sold 73% of the tickets,” he said.
“In any other country in the world, if they’ve delivered that result in ticketing, they’d have been jumping up and down with excitement. But our expectations are higher and we’re OK with that. We’ve sold out the last four days so it’s been a world-class ticketing result, but we want better.”