Matt finish pure gold
Jack is so close
LAUGHER: Silver medal JACK LAUGHER missed out on his third gold of the Championships by less than a point.
Diving stars Laugher and Chris Mears were pipped in the synchronised 3m springboard by Russia.
The Olympic and Commonwealth champions led going into the final round but Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ilya Zakharov produced a 94.62 dive to the British pair’s 78.66, to win by 431.16 points to 430.62.
“To get a medal, you can’t not be pleased,” said Laugher, who took individual gold in both 1m and 3m springboard. MATT Hudson-Smith, for so long plagued by injuries and bad luck, finally won a major title last night. Britain’s 400m star led from start to finish to land his gamble of going off like a bat out of hell then hanging on. Disqualified for running out of his lane at the Commonwealth Games in April, Hudson-Smith vowed to get it right this time. And after blowing away his rivals in the semi-finals he just hung on in the final to take the title in 44.81 seconds. “I’m never doing that again,” said HudsonSmith, 23. “I’ve never really had lactic acid [build-up] before but I got to 350m and I was like ‘what is this!’ I was swimming – that’s why I was on the floor for so long.” Katarina JohnsonThompson fell agonisingly short of her golden goal but still answered those who had doubted her. Written off as mentally weak, she outfought all but the world No1 Nafi Thiam to grab silver with her best-ever heptathlon score of 6,759 points. “I definitely want more,” said JohnsonThompson after once and for all burying her demons. “But I’m happy with the whole attitude, the whole heptathlon, my progression and the fact I feel I’m on to something.
“Up until this point, these championships, I wasn’t as confident as I am coming out of them. This shows I can perform against the world’s best.”
Thiam had just too much as she added the European crown to her world and Olympic titles but the Belgian had to dig deeper than ever to maintain her two-year unbeaten record.
Thiam produced the second longest jump of her life followed by the furthest javelin throw ever seen at the Euros. Anything less would have let in her resurgent rival.
Where she might have been expected to fade after leading overnight, JohnsonThompson did quite the opposite.
She nailed the longest jump (6.68m) of all on her final attempt – then threw a lifetime best 42.16m to limit Thiam’s inevitable gain in the javelin.
That gave the Liverpudlian an outside shot at gold in the 800m but she could only make up 10 of the 13 seconds she required on Thiam and lost out by 57 points.
Dina Asher-Smith is today expected to go one better and retain her 200m title after cantering to the second fastest time in European Championship history (22.33secs) to qualify 0.25sec ahead of the rest.