Amid the adrenalised delirium of her second European title in three days, Amy Hunt walked to the nearest TV camera, held up her hands and, in homage to Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator screamed: “Are you not entertained?” It quickly transpired that the 24-year-old Cambridge graduate had been quite the warrior off the track too. Because, as she revealed after collecting a 200m gold medal to go alongside Monday’s 100m title, she has been nearly fainting this year when running over the longer distance. I have been nearly fainting after a lot of my 200s this year.
I had just to go into that one and get on the bend and be really brave.” Hunt had entered the 200m final as the overwhelming favourite, but she had to work to chase down the two-time champion, Dina Asher-Smith, one lane outside her, around the bend. Having done that, the raucous 20,000 crowd at the Alexander Stadium expected to see a coronation. Instead it turned into a struggle, and Hunt only just had enough in the tank to cross the line in 22.19sec, ahead of Ireland’s fast-finishing Rhasidat Adeleke, who ran a national record of 22.28.
Britain’s Asher-Smith took bronze a further 0.01 further back. It means that Hunt’s dream of winning an historic quadruple of gold medals at these European Championships is alive – as she made clear afterwards by holding two fingers up in her right hand, before flipping the hand to show four fingers. And the 200 is the hardest physically.
Just keep those thighs up, girl.’ “But there’s no celebrating, no champagne until Sunday night because I have a debt to the ladies,” Hunt explained, as she set her sights on the 4x100m and mixed relays over the weekend. After 92 years, Ireland finally has a male European championship gold medallist. And his name is English – Mark English.
The 33-year-old doctor from Donegal, produced a surgical performance to take gold, tracking and then overtaking Croatian Marino Bloudek in the home straight to win in 1:45.26. I had planned to go to Sierra Nevada at 6am tomorrow, so I’m going to have to try to rebook that flight. These moments don’t come around often.
I have a life that’s never come around for me before, so I’ll have to try to celebrate it somehow.” Bloudek clung on to take silver with Spain’s Mohamed Attaoui winning bronze. As the huge Irish contingent celebrated, the heart also went out to Britain’s Max Burgin, who was forced to pull out minutes before the race after suffering an injury in the warmup. It caps a summer of woe for Burgin, who also picked up a virus at the Commonwealth Games and didn’t make it out of the semi-finals.
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