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E-mail Xinhua, June 14, 2024
Host Italy won the men's 4x100m relay, the last race at the European Athletics Championships on Thursday, topping the tally with 24 medals.
The five-day championships in Rome's Stadio Olimpico, the last major European athletics competition before the start of the Paris Olympics next month, marked 50 years since the last time Rome hosted the prestigious event.
The Italian team claimed the 4x100m relay title in 37.82 seconds, only 0.32 seconds slower than its winning time at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. Three of the four Italian sprinters had been crowned at Tokyo 2020, including Marcell Jacobs, who earlier took the men's 100m gold in a season-best 10.02 seconds.
In the medal standings, Italy was followed by France with 16 medals and Britain with 13.
In the middle distances, 23-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway won his third consecutive double victory at the European Championships in the 1,500m and the 5,000m. In Rome, he won the 1,500m in a championship record of 3 minutes 31.95 seconds.
Ingebrigtsen, the defending Olympic champion in the 1,500m and the two-time defending world champion at 5,000m, is expected to compete in both events at Paris 2024.
As for other highlights, Italy's Gianmarco Tamberi, the defending Olympic and world champion in the high jump, added the third European gold medal to his collection with a jump of 2.37 meters.
In the men's 4x400m relay, Belgium won in 2:59.84, while the Netherlands took home the title in the women's event in 3:22.39. The Dutch team was anchored by Femke Bol, who earlier won the women's 400m hurdles in 52.49 seconds. Bol won both the 400m and the 400m hurdles at last year's World Championships.
Italy's Nadia Battocletti won the women's 5,000m with a championship record of 14:35.29 and triumphed in 10,000m in 30:51.32.
Britain's Dina Asher-Smith clinched the women's 100m title in 10.99 seconds, 0.04 seconds ahead of Ewa Swoboda of Poland. Asher-Smith was also part of the gold medal winning team in the women's 4x100m relay, which finished in 41.91 seconds ahead of France and the Netherlands. Britain's time was the fastest in Europe so far this year.
Swiss sprinters won the men's and women's 200m. Timothe Mumenthaler finished first in the men's event in 20.28 seconds ahead of Italy's Filippo Tortu, who ran the anchor leg on the Italian 4x100m relay team. Meanwhile, Muhinga Kambundji took the women's 200m gold in 22.49 seconds in a photo finish over Britain's Daryll Neita, who was just 0.01 seconds behind.
Alexander Doom of Belgium won the men's 400m in 44.15 seconds, while Natalia Kaczmarek won the women's 400m in 48.98 seconds.
Yemaneberhan Crippa of Italy won the men's half-marathon in 1:01:03, one second ahead of teammate Pietro Riva and four seconds ahead of Germany's Amanal Petros. Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdal of Norway grabbed the women's half-marathon title in a championship record time of 1:08:09.
Greece's Miltiadis Tentoglou set a championship record of 8.65m in winning the men's long jump.
Estonian Johannes Erm won the decathlon with 8,764 points in one of the strongest performances of the year so far, while Belgium's Nafissatou Thiam won the women's heptathlon with 6,848 points, a championship record.
The next host of the biennial European Athletics Championships will be Birmingham, Britain.
