European Champs – reflections and predictions

Our previews for the events at Munich 2022 have held up pretty well, which makes us think – are major championship becoming more predictable?

With three championships in little over a month, some may strangely be looking forward to going back to events with pacemakers, one off-races with pretty much the same athletes in every meet, many of them wearing the same kit and all that changes is the venue.

These events will happen without the needs of heats and the danger of some athlete you have barely heard of suddenly challenging for a high place.

While many find the average Diamond League meeting lacking something special – apart from Zurich and Monaco – is championship racing itself getting predictable?

We looked at our Euro predictions done a few days before the championships started in Munich and saw how accurate we were at guessing the result.

This doesn’t suggest we are very good at doing it but more accurately how often the favourites succeed.

We predicted 24 of the 48 winners but a further 11 of our choices gained medals. Where we did not get the winner on a further 18 occasions, the winner was in our top three.

We predicted eight British golds and 21 medals but got six and 20 respectively – and it would have been close if not for misfortune in the last two women’s events.

The Commonwealth Games saw a similar rate – with 23 of the 46 wins being correctly chosen in our preview – although only in one event, the women’s marathon (where our choice did not compete), did we not either select an athlete who did not make the top three or the eventual winner was not in our chosen top three, suggesting the Commonwealths was even more predictable or had less prospective medallists.

Men

100m
Close on the first two times. Reece Prescod disappointed.
Prediction: 1 Jacobs ITA 9.96; 2 Hughes GBR 10.01; 3 Prescod GBR 10.03; 4 Azu GBR 10.06
Actual: 1 Jacobs 9.95; 2 Hughes 9.99; 3 Azu 10.13; 7 Prescod 10.18

200m
2018 winner Ramil Guliyev pulled up injured and world indoor champion Blessing Afrifah was in lane one but Zharnel Hughes would have won anyway. We underestimated the very reliable Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake.
Prediction: 1 Guliyev TUR 19.96; 2 Afrifah ISR 20.01; 3 Hughes GBR 20.05; 4 Filippo Tortu ITA 20.09; 5 Dobson GBR 20.13
Actual: 1 Hughes 20.07; 2 Mitchell-Blake 20.17. 3 Tortu 20.27; 4 Dobson 20.34 (20.21sf)

400m
The winner was predictable and we were close on time but underestimated the two other medallists.
Prediction: 1 Hudson-Smith GBR 44.55; 2 Bonevacia NED 44.91; 3 K…