by Stuart Weir
The night of Day Four had some exciting performances, and Stuart Weir wants us to remember those great moments on August 19, 2022!
A night to remember
Thursday 19 August in Munich will go down in history as one of the greatest nights of track and field action in the history of the universe. Forget any thoughts of “This was just the European Championship” as there were several events where the best in the world would have beaten all comers.
The evening did not start well. There was rain and then an announcement that with the risk of lightning, spectators in the open part of the stadium needed to evacuate and go undercover. The delay was only half an hour. The semi-finals of the 200 served as a warm-up act, not that Dina Asher-Smith, Zharnel Hughes, Ramil Guliyev, or Mujinga Kambundji deserve to be anyone’s warm-up act. I am also pleased to report that the French sprinter Moujamadou FALL did not live up to his name.
Center stage for most of the 31,000 crowds was the women’s long jump. Munich Ambassador, Olympic Champion, World Champion, and European Champion, and Malaika Mihambo had the crowd’s support. Mihambo jumped 6.95, 6.99 and 7.03 but still lost to Ivana Vuleta (Spanovic). The Serbian’s 7.06 helped her add the European outdoor title to the World Indoor, which she won in her homeland in March also with 7.06.
The men’s high jump was won by the (joint) Olympic champion, who brings high jump alive, Gianmarco Tamberi, with 2.30. It was a strange competition, with five of thirteen athletes failing to clear the opening height of 2.18.
Jacob Ingebrigtsen did what he does best, running faster than anyone else to win the 1500m, having already won the 5000m this week. How he has matured and grown since we first same him as a 17-year-old in the 2018 European Championships.
Nafi Thiam won the Heptathlon, as she usually does.
Konstanze Klosterhalfen – think how much harder it must me for her to sign autographs than Seb Coe – won the 5000m from Yasemin Can and Eilish McColgan. The winner commented: “This is the most beautiful moment in my life. I wanted to run for me, for the crowd. It’s a dream”.
Wojciech Nowicki won the hammer throw.
In addition to Klosterhalfen and Mihambo, Tobias Potye won silver in the high jump to take Germany’s medal total to 11.
A great evening, sadly put in perspective by the announcement that the mother of a Ukrainian high jumper, Kateryna Tabashynk, had been killed in her home in Kharkiv by a Russian missile.
