Beatrice Chepkoech concluded the final World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of the season in Zagreb by shattering the world best for the women’s 2,000 metres steeplechase with a time of 5min 47.42sec.

Germany’s Gina Luckenkemper sent a home crowd already supercharged with emotion by the dramatic victory of home decathlete Niklas Kaul into further delirium as a desperate lunge for the line earned her the European women’s 100 metres title by five thousandths of a second.

All 10 European athletes who won world titles in Eugene last month, and all 12 European Olympic champions have converged in Munich for the European Athletics Championships that starts here tomorrow.

Britain’s newly established 800 metres champion Daniel Rowden set a personal best of 1min 44.09sec to win a hugely competitive race at the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Zagreb, where local heroine Sandra Perkovic delivered another home discus victory with 64.67 metres.

Rio 2016 shot put champion Ryan Crouser maintained his superb winning run tonight in the opening event of the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Zagreb as he beat world champion Joe Kovacs with a meeting record of 22.74 metres, the best seen in Europe since 1988.

Double Olympic discus champion Sandra Perković won the title of best Croatian female athlete of the year for a record eighth time in a row, and gymnast Tin Srbić has been named as the best male athlete.

International Swimming League (ISL) financer Konstantin Grigorishin suggested at his Stamford Bridge summit yesterday that the "day of the sports governing body is coming to an end" and has called for swimmers to accept nothing less than 50 per cent of revenues from competition organisers.

A crowd of 60,500 spectators - the largest yet at the Berlin 2018 European Athletics Championships - witnessed another huge night of athletics here as Norway's 17-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Britain's Dinah Asher-Smith completed golden doubles in the men's 5,000 metres and women's 200m respectively.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya, whose National Federation have vowed to fight the impending International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rules on hyperandrogenism that threaten to diminish her effectiveness, did not betray any anxieties on the track tonight.

On the final day of an International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships that have produced a succession of surprise results, the last two field event golds in the men’s high jump and women’s discus went to the disciplines’ undisputed, pre-eminent performers - Mutaz Essa Barshim and Sandra Perković.

Christian Taylor and Sandra Perkovic defended their respective men’s triple jump and women’s discus titles here in a morning session of athletics which also saw the forlorn departure of the woman who has carried Brazil’s gold medal hopes on her shoulders for four years, Fabiana Murer.

World and Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 metre champion Mo Farah gets his Olympic season off and running in Eugene tomorrow night as he runs his first outdoor track race since retaining his world titles in Beijing last summer.

Olympic champions David Rudisha and Renaud Lavillenie suffered unexpected defeats in a dramatic evening of action at the International Association of Athletics Federations’ second Diamond League meeting of the season in Shanghai.

Croatian discus thrower Sandra Perkovic earned the most prize money from this year’s International Association of Athletics Federations’ Diamond League as she totalled $106,000 (£68,000/€94,000) in a list dominated by female athletes.

No world records were set at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Lausanne on Thursday night, which was held in an old stadium marked out for destruction. And yet people still managed to enjoy themselves hugely. How was this possible?