by Stuart Weir
This is the fourth and final piece on the 2025 European Athletics Team Championships, an event that RunBlogRun senior writer Stuart Weir truly enjoys covering, from on site and remote, which is what he did this year, due to schedule conflicts. Stuart had just come back from Oslo, Stockholm, and Paris. We thank him for his coverage.
Italy are the champions again!
The Italy made a successful defence of their European Athletics Team Championships 1st Division title which they won the first time in the previous competition, at Silesia 2023.
The points totals were:
1 Italy 431.5
2 Poland 405.5
3 Netherlands 397
4 Germany 384.5
5 Great Britain 381
6 Spain 378
The statement in the European Athletic press release, while factually correct, may be an over-simplification. It said: “Aligned with their record-setting medal table-topping performance at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships with 24 medals including 11 golds, it is a truly golden era of Italian athletics”.
Compare the medals won by the top six in the Paris Olympics and you get a slightly different picture:
1 GB 10
2 Netherlands 6
3 Spain 4
3 Germany 4
5 Italy 3
6 Poland 1
I love the European Teams. I have watched it in England, Russia, Poland and France. I regret that I could not fit it into my schedule this year. But results have to be interpreted within the context of the event. Italy were worthy winners by 26 points over Poland – that means that had 27 Polish athletes each finished just one place higher in their event Poland would have won.
Winning the European teams is about two things – getting your best athletes to compete and being consistent. GB was by far the most successful European nation at the Paris Olympics but none of our individual medalists were in Madrid and only three athletes from the five medal-winning Paris relay teams. When the season ends and if Josh Kerr gets a medal in Tokyo, will anyone say to him: “OK, but you did not run in Madrid”?
Italy achieved their well-deserved success with consistent, across the board performances with Italian athletes finishing in the top eight in 30 of the 37 disciplines. There were two Italian winners on the final day: Leonardo Fabbri in the shot and Larissa Iapichino in the long jump. To keep the home crowd happy, Jael Bestue won the 200 in a new championships record, national record and European lead.
Two of the highlights of the Sunday evening were field events with Yaroslava Mahuchikh, beaten in her last two Diamond Leagues, won the high jump with 2m – see my final caveat – and the women’s long jump, which was a magnificent competition with Iapichino’s fifth round 6.92 overtaking early leader Malaika Mihambo (6.84).
