The Binocular

Let’s quickly glance at the numbers from the World Championships and see what it means for the European Championships next year.

The medals table shows that Great Britain finished in a highly respectable 8th position, and was the 4th most successful European country, behind Russia, Poland, and Germany.

This may be a rather crude method, but if we just take into account the European nations then things look quite good for next summer. I have taken a look at the results of all 47 events and taken note of the top 3 Europeans in each event.

This projection will put Great Britain 2nd at the European Championships with an amazing 11 gold medals. This would be a record for GB at these championships. They are only beaten by Russia who also have 11 gold medals but come out with one more silver.

How realistic is this target? Well let’s take a look. In the projection, the 11 Golds come from Chambers in the 100 metres, Freeman in the 200 metres, Meadows in the 800 metres, Dobriskey in the 1500 metres, Farah in the 5000 metres, Sharman in the 110 metre hurdles, Rutherford in the long jump, Idowu in the triple Jump, Ennis in the Heptathlon and the men winning both the 100 and 400 metre relays.

I’d label Chambers and Ennis favourites straight away, but with others facing quite tough opposition it will be a tough task to translate all 11 to gold in one year’s time.

The middle to long distances are very tactical, field events are often very tight and relays are always dodgy as are hurdles. If we delve further down to the 5 potential silver medals then this could compensate, with Ohuruogo, Bingham, Brewer, Greene and the women’s 400 metre relay team.

All in all, I remain surprisingly optimistic for the European Championships next summer. A double figure gold medal count could spark things up for the big occasion in 2012.