From a British perspective, we’ve long talked about the likes of Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford.
Two have retired while Mo’s switched his attention to the road but Berlin truly felt like the passing of the baton.
As a nation, we’ve now got some worthy successors in the wings, the stand-outs being Dina Asher-Smith and Laura Muir. Together at these European Championships, they’ve taken the crucial jump from running well on the circuit and being good at Diamond League races to big national moments at outdoor major championships.
Now it’s all about turning European titles into gold at the World Championships next year and then the Olympics in 2020.
Before the Europeans, I’d talked of a potential treble in the sense that the British men had the chance of a 1-2-3 in the 100metres.
The treble manifested itself in the end but not in the way I’d envisaged, with Dina simply a class apart. It was an apt performance in a stadium with the history it has.
I actually watched her 100m semi-final from the warm-up area with the British team and I was back inside the stadium for the final itself.
And you have to say that her performance was absolutely sensational, in fact the same could be said for all her performances.
The second she walked out for the 100m final, it looked like her natural territory, almost as if she knew she was going to win.
But despite her making it look easy, there really is a big gulf between the Diamond League and a championship performance, one that she’s closed.
Of course, I thought she had every chance of doing the treble but these are class fields. And no one else can say this is just the Europeans — Dina’s is the standard in the world right now, she’s very much the top of the heap.
Source: standard.co.uk
Facebook Comments