Charlie Dobson is not only one of Britain’s best young athletes, but also holds a first class degree in aeronautical engineering. So it was perhaps no great surprise that he reverted to the oldest sporting cliche in the book by declaring himself “over the moon” after winning his first major medal, a 400m silver, at these European championships.
But the fourth night of these championships was not the golden double act for which the British team had hoped. Dobson had been a warm favourite to win gold but found Belgium’s Alexander Doom too good – while the world indoor champion Molly Caudery could manage only a bronze medal. Still, that is the unpredictability of sport. And both of these 24-year-olds will have bigger and brighter days ahead.
And as Dobson pointed out, he could have no complaints after running a personal best of 44.38sec – the seventh fastest man in the world this year. But he had no answer to Belgium’s world indoor champion, Doom, who ran the fastest time in his career to win gold in a championship record of 44.15sec.
“I couldn’t be happier with that,” said Dobson, whose dissertation was on the finite element analysis of a gas turbine engine. “I think I executed the race perfectly, exactly how me and my coach wanted to. Unfortunately it wasn’t the gold but I’m more than happy to take the silver, especially with a personal best like that.”
It was just reward for a series of injuries after winning a silver medal over 200 metres at the 2018 world junior championships. However a move up to 400m at the start of October last year has clearly worked wonders.
No British female pole vaulter has ever won a major outdoor title, but Caudery was expected to break that hoodoo. However, she was not quite her fluent best and had to settle for bronze after only clearing 4.73 – 13cm below her personal best.
Still this result still represented progress given that his time last year, few people outside track and field knew Caudery’s name. Injuries including nearly losing her finger after a freak weightlifting accident that required three surgeries to fix had slowed her progress – but she clearly remains in with a strong chance of Olympic gold.
Gold was taken by Switzerland’s Angelica Moser, who failed with her first two vaults of the night at 4.43m but went on to jump 4.78m to equal the Swiss national record. Greece’s 2016 Olympic champion Aikaterini Stefanidi cleared 4.73m at the first attempt to earn the silver on countback from Caudery.
But the race of the night came in the women’s 400m, as the Polish athlete Natalia Kaczmarek held off Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke to win gold in 48.98 – the fastest time of the world this year.
Adeleke set a personal best of 49.07 to come second, with Lieke Klaver of the Netherlands taking bronze. Britain’s Laviai Nielsen was sixth in 50.71, with Ireland’s Sharlene Mawdsley eighth in 51.59.
Meanwhile Tuesday night will feature the welcome return of Eilish McColgan, the 2022 Commonwealth Games 10,000m champion, after two nightmare years.
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It was bad enough that a knee injury has kept the 33-year-old off the track. But she has also lost her stepfather, John Nuttall, who died suddenly from a heart attack aged 56 in November, as well as her grandmother, Betty, last month.
“I’ve had such a shit year,” McColgan said. “Yes, there’ll be people sitting at home watching on the TV and on their sofas going: ‘Oh, God, like, she’s nowhere near where she used to be. Or look at that. She’s not the same level she was or she’s getting old or whatever.’ But they’ve not had to live the last year that I’ve lived.
“And I can’t explain why my mum has been through over the last so many months to lose her husband and then to lose her mum. But tough times force you into a different mindset when you stand on the start line. I think that’s why I’m doing the Europeans. I just think well, what have I got to lose?”
McColgan does not expect to win – not given that her fellow Scot Megan Keith is by far the quickest in the field. However she hopes that a bracelet that her granny gave her will inspire her to qualify for her fourth Olympic Games. “She loved watching me on TV,” McColgan said. “And I have that bracelet on every single day.
“It’s a little bit of a source of strength. When you are getting a little bit tired in sessions, you think: ‘Right, keep going.’ Because I know that she’d want me to be there.”
