EURO DOUBLE FOR GOLDEN GIRL LAURA
Britain’s golden girl Laura storms to historic double-double in Euros
HISTORY for the individual and a record haul of 12 medals for the collective. How unexpected on that latter front and how marvellously predictable on the former, such is the world- class talent in the legs and lungs of Laura Muir.
Making a formality of continental- level competition really is something, but it is quite something else to win by the monumental margins that she managed on her way to two golds in the space of three days on her home track here at the European Indoor Championships.
The second of those was achieved with a three- second cushion last night, giving her a successful defence of the 1500metres title she won in Belgrade two years ago.
In truth, no one doubted she would get that particular job done — if there was any difficulty to her championships, it was the challenge of Konstanze Klosterhalfen in defending her 3,000m gold on Friday and the fitness requirement of four races across two distances in a long weekend.
But she battered Klosterhalfen and then brutalised the 1500m field, beating Poland’s Sofia Ennaoui with a relatively casual time of 4min 5.92sec to defend her other title from Belgrade.
A double- double, they call it, and the achievement is best defined by knowing no one else, male or female, has previously done one in the 49-year history of the event. That is how good she is, even if it is necessary to note that her distances at world and Olympic level carry the deepest talent pools of any discipline, and by comparison she only faced modest opposition here.
Modest, yes, but not weak. And in any case, her body of work identifies her as among the very best in the world, with four European Indoor golds, two World Indoor Pure gold: Shelayna Oskan-Clarke medals, one European outdoor gold and two Diamond League crowns. She ought to fear no one in this World Championships year. Whether her scrutinised running spikes gave her an advantage is unknown at this point. As of yesterday, the IAAF said they had received no complaints about them, and in any case it is difficult to see who from the pack might have caught her even if she’d worn clogs. Muir said: ‘It’s special. I set myself a big task this weekend and as it came closer and closer, I was thinking, “What have I done?” People were getting world leads and national records and the fields were much stronger than last time. But there was no way I wasn’t winning at home.
‘All I’m missing is that world stage medal and hopefully an Olympic medal. The worlds in Doha is the first step and I want to be on that podium.’
While Muir’s golds were reasonably easy to predict, far less so was the unprecedented success of a relatively inexperienced team. Again, one must stress these fields had nothing on what will be found at world level, but six medals yesterday alone took the overall haul to 12, which is two clear of their previous best.
An encouraging sign when compared to the 2017 World Championships, in which Mo Farah was the only individual to make a podium.
The fact that so many of the bigger names in Britain stayed away — Farah, Dina Asher-Smith and Reece Prescod, among them — shows the times are not as bleak as they once appeared. Whether those who succeeded here can step up is the big unknown.
Shelayna Oskan-Clarke, for her part, delivered the first gold of her career yesterday with a quite brilliant run in the 800m. The 29-year-old, a silver medallist in this event two years ago and third at the World Indoors in 2018, led from gun to tape to win in 2:02.58.
The biggest shock came from Jamie Webb’s silver in the men’s 800m. The 24-year-old, a secondary school science teacher for the bulk of his time, only ranked sixth among the finalists based on their season’s bests. But he went out aggressively from the gun and clocked 1:47.13, behind Spain’s Alvaro de Arriba.
Webb said: ‘I’m delighted with this. People think because I’m 24 going on 25, you’re not going to improve. But I look at people like Nick Simmonds who won Olympic bronze at 30 or 31.’
Holly Bradshaw, the 2013 pole vault champion, cleared 4.75m and beat the world and Olympic champion, Ekaterini Stefanidi, to take silver behind Russia’s Anzhelika Sidorova.
Tim Duckworth won silver in the men’s heptathlon, while the women’s 4x400m team got silver. Poland’s victory in that relay meant they topped the medal table based on golds, despite Britain’s superior overall tally.