Hunt makes history with fourth gold as GB dominates European Athletics Championships

Amy Hunt stood on the Birmingham track with four fingers raised to the sky, the roar of a sell-out crowd still washing over her as she crossed the line in the mixed 4x100m relay. At twenty-four, she had just become the first athlete ever to win four gold medals at a single European Athletics Championships. The time was 39.97 seconds—a European record, set on the home straight with Germany's challenge fading behind her.

It was the capstone to an extraordinary week. Hunt had arrived in Birmingham with a bold declaration: she wanted all four sprint titles. She wanted to be iconic. And she had delivered, winning the 100m, the 200m, the women's 4x100m, and now this mixed relay, each victory building on the last in front of her home crowd. "I think to finish it off with some of my best friends in the sport is incredible," she told BBC Sport afterward, still catching her breath.

But Hunt's historic night was only part of the story. Running alongside her in that relay was Dina Asher-Smith, the 30-year-old sprinter who had just claimed her eighth gold medal at these championships—a record that stands unmatched in the competition's ninety-two-year history. Asher-Smith, who had won her first European title a decade earlier, was now a twenty-two-time international medallist. Hunt had called her "the real life GOAT," and the description seemed to fit. Together with Jeremiah Azu and Zharnel Hughes, they had claimed six of the seven possible sprint golds available, a dominance that underscored British sprinting's current standing in European athletics.

The night also belonged to Georgia Hunter Bell, who won the women's 1500m in commanding fashion. The thirty-two-year-old had burst clear of the field to finish in 4:07.78, more than a second ahead of Poland's Klaudia Kazimierska. For Hunter Bell, it was the third major title of 2026—she had won world indoor gold in March and Commonwealth gold two weeks earlier in Glasgow. She was now one victory away from completing a quadruple, with the World Ultimate Championships coming in September. Her rise had been improbable: she had stepped away from the sport for five years after a junior career marked by promise but derailed by overtraining injuries. When she returned to serious competition in 2024, working with Trevor Painter—coach of Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson—she had rebuilt herself into a genuine contender at the highest level.

Great Britain finished the championships with nineteen medals overall, a haul that reflected the depth of their track program. But there was a sting in the final accounting: Italy had edged them to the top of the medal table by winning the men's 4x400m relay by just 0.03 seconds. Matthew Hudson-Smith, running the anchor leg for Britain's silver-medal quartet, had surpassed French sprinter Christophe Lemaitre as the most decorated man in championship history with his ninth medal. The margin of defeat was so thin it barely registered as a defeat at all.

Jazmin Sawyers, the long jumper, had her own story of near-miss and resilience. Two weeks after winning the Commonwealth title in Glasgow, she produced a career-best leap of 6.99 metres—the biggest outdoor jump of her life. It was one centimetre short of Italy's Larissa Iapichino's winning distance. Sawyers had returned to competition only last year after an Achilles rupture that had ended her Olympic hopes. "There were minuscule moments where I doubted it," she said. "The only reason I was able to get through it was because I believed I could get back here." She had, and she was stronger than before.

The championships had been the first European Athletics Championships held in Great Britain, and the home nation had delivered performances that will be remembered long after the crowds left Birmingham. Hunt's four golds, Asher-Smith's record eighth, Hunter Bell's continued ascent, and Sawyers' defiant return had written themselves into the record books. What remained to be seen was whether these athletes could sustain this momentum through the rest of the Olympic cycle—and whether Hunt, in particular, could build on what she had already achieved.