The 27th European Athletics Championships closed at Alexander Stadium on Sunday evening with Great Britain second on the medal table and two of its sprinters leaving Birmingham with permanent places in the record book. The championships, staged from 10 to 16 August, were the first to be held in a British city, and the home team responded with a week of sprinting that has no precedent at this competition.
Amy Hunt became the first athlete to win four gold medals at a single edition of the championships. She took the women's 100m and 200m titles, anchored the women's 4x100m relay to gold, and then closed the meeting by running the final leg of the mixed 4x100m relay. Britain's quartet in that event, which also included Jeremiah Azu and Zharnel Hughes, the silver medallists in the men's 100m and 200m respectively, stopped the clock at 39.97 for a European record.
The same race carried Dina Asher-Smith past a mark that had stood since the 1970s. Asher-Smith left Birmingham with two relay golds and a bronze in the 200m, taking her career tally at these championships to 11 medals, eight of them gold. That moves her clear of Poland's Irena Szewinska, who had held the record with 10, and makes her the most decorated athlete in the history of the European Athletics Championships.
Britain finished the week with nine golds, eight silvers and two bronzes, second only to a strong Italian team. Georgia Hunter Bell added a gold on the final day, and Italy denied Britain again in the men's 4x400m relay, winning by 0.03 seconds to record back-to-back victories in the event. The Netherlands and Italy took the last two titles of the championships in the 4x400m relays, closing out a meeting that produced consistently deep finals rather than one-sided processions.
Attention now turns quickly. The Wanda Diamond League resumes on 21 August in Lausanne with only three meetings left before the two-day series final in Brussels on 4 and 5 September, and several of the athletes who medalled in Birmingham will be back on the circuit within days. For British athletics, though, the more durable outcome may be the crowd rather than the medals: a full Alexander Stadium for seven consecutive days is the kind of evidence the sport rarely gets to present at home.