European Cup glory for Britain's men with just a small note of caution

The future's rosy: triple jumper Philips Idowu is a serious contender for gold in Beijing

It would be unwise to read too much into individual contributions to the country’s cause just 46 days before the Olympic Games open. Nine victories, seven by men and two by women, crowned Britain’s first success since 2000, but the performances told us little about what will happen in Beijing.

As winning triple jumper Idowu said: ‘Winning is nice, it’s cool, but as a team it doesn’t mean we are going to win massive amounts of medals on the world stage. There are a lot of countries that aren’t competing here. You can’t take much from it.’

However, a sport that has been on hard rations for years, having suffered the indignity of being stripped of the last Cup win by Dwain Chambers’ doping admissions and humiliated at a World Championships where Britain did not win a single individual track medal, can at least take comfort that the worst is behind it. Beijing is too soon for golden hurrahs but there is a glow growing on the 2012 horizon.

Not since 1989 have Britain won nine events and never have the men’s team won by a margin as wide as yesterday’s 14 points. At least they will go from here to the Olympic trials in Birmingham in three weeks and on to Beijing believing in themselves. 

‘The team’s morale is high,’ said Idowu, not something that could have been said of British squads of recent vintage.

Idowu’s own performance was the best in world terms — a third-round jump of 17.46 metres not so far from his season’s best of 17.55m in his previous competition. He is a serious gold medal contender in Beijing and confident now that one day he will eliminate the Beamonesque world record of 18.29m by Jonathan Edwards from the books.

‘I reckon I can put down another metre,’ he said. Yesterday was not about personal glory. ‘It’s a win, it’ll do. I won eight points, that’s what I was here to do. This was about securing first place for the team,’ added Idowu.

So committed was he to the cause that after a foul in the first round, he called for silence when the 11,000 crowd started clapping before his second. ‘I needed to concentrate on my jump. Once I had done my business, done my bit for the country, they could clap all they liked because then’s it’s about me entertaining them,’ he said of a second jump of 17.29m that launched him into a lead he was to extend later.

The men had four winners on the first day, Tyrone Edgar in the 100m, Rooney in the 400m, Mo Farah at 5,000m and the 4x100m relay team, upgraded one place after the disqualification of the winning Germans for running out of their lane.

Captain Marlon Devonish in the 200m and metric miler Andy Baddeley, stepping up a distance to 3,000m, added to the number  yesterday.

Devonish, now 32 and an Olympic relay gold medallist in 2004, supported Idowu’s caution. ‘It’s a good stepping stone. It’s not the Olympics,’ he said. Devonish stumbled coming out of his blocks and was left to chase. He finally snatched the lead in the final few strides.

‘I kept my composure. I showed my experience,’ he said. The women failed to improve their overnight position of third. Nicola Sanders won the 400m in her first run of the summer and Jenny Meadows the 800m, a black ribbon on her vest a reminder of the death of her father only two weeks ago. No-one could add to the pair yesterday but Christine Ohuruogu in the 200m, Kate Reed in the 5,000m and Jade Johnson in the long jump were all runners-up.

Indeed, Johnson’s best jump of 6.81m was the most encouraging British performance of the weekend. It was a marginal  improvement on her four-year-old career best and ranks her eighth in the world after two years when she was so off the pace that she was stripped of Lottery support. She is back.

Perhaps British athletics is.