I wrote a very long, detailed report of the meet's highlights from my point of view, and then the computer crashed!
Won't try to re-do it, but it was an exciting championships!
World leading times in the Women's 60m (Del Ponte) and 60m hurdles (Visser) and the men's (Tentaglou) and women's (Bekh-Romanchuk) long jump.
Another PB and NR for Femke Bol (her 5th? this season!), who seemed effortless in winning the women's 400m and anchoring the winning Dutch relay team.
She has the same coach as Ajia Del Ponte who won the 60m.
Two new rising stars in the 800m - 19yr old Keely Hodgkinson of Britain and Patryk Dobek, a former 400m hurdler, of Poland.
Some interesting points - Tentaglou had a knee injury and only took 2 jumps in the entire competition. One jump in the qualifying round, and one jump in the final.
That's very impressive! He said that if he were healthy, he would have easily jumped 8.50. Still with his one jump final, he managed a World Leading mark.
Nadine Visser is a former heptathlete, just like country woman Dafne Schippers. Similarly, Karsten Warholm was a decathlete.
All 3 were successful multi-eventers, but it seems that the 'cross training' and strength garnered from those disciplines have served them well in the sprints. Interesting!
The men's 60m was disappointing. None of our guys did as well in the finals as they did in the semis and heats. Which means they either choked or were tired. Either way disappointing.
Another disappointment is Germany. The most populous country (83 million) competing at the championships and they had no gold medals and just 6 medals overall.
Poland, with 40% the population of Germany, had one gold medal and 10 medals overall. The Netherlands had 4 gold medals and 7 overall. Switzerland had 2 gold medals. Sweden had 1 gold medal and 4 medals overall. Finland has a population of only 5 million and they had 3 medals overall. Germany really needs to step it up!