Christophe Lemaitre of France completed the sprint double winning the men's 200m on Friday evening.

On the busiest week of his athletics career France’s rising star Christophe Lemaitre bagged his second gold medal at the European Athletics Championships barely 46 hours after his 100m title by winning the 200m final. In doing so Lemaitre, the youngest athlete of Friday’s final, became the second Frenchman to snatch gold over 200m in the history of the championships, no less than 44 years after his predecessor Roger Bambuck took honours when it was still hand timing.

The early leader of the final was Christian Malcom as the 31-year-old Briton ran a superb bend to builed a five-metre lead on Lemaitre, who had a poor start – likely due to the tiredness caused by being in his sixth race in Barcelona – and was only fourth entering the home straight behind Norway’s Jaysuma Saidy Ndure and his fellow Frenchman Martial Mbandjock. At the 80m point David Alerte, also of France, injured himself and left with no chance of winning a medal.

The closing metres were unforgettable as Malcolm stil had a slight advantage on a fast-finishing Lemaitre with some 20m left but the French ace reduced the gap inch by inch and pipped the Briton, who ran next to Lemaitre in lane six, at the very last metre to finally strike gold in 20.37 (-0.8) against Malcolm’s 20.38 – still a season’s best for him. In the fight for the minor place on the podium Mbandjock was successful in landing his second bronze medal in Barcelona after his 100m third place on Wednesday. On a statistical note the podium of both the 100 and 200m were France (gold), Great Britain (silver) and France again (bronze).

The injured Alerte reached the finish line walking in 1:27.24.

As a double 100 and 200m champion Lemaitre takes the baton from Portugal’s Francis Obikwelu who managed that feat in Göteborg 2006 and became the first European-born sprinter to make the 100-200 double since Italy’s Pietro Mennea back in 1978.

Lemaitre was quoted as saying: “It was a very tight race, my start was not as good as I expected. I had a lack of confidence in the middle of the race but I tried to do my best to pick up well over the last metres. Today is an important day for French athletics as we have won our fourth gold medal”. Lemaitre also added that he is more happy now with his gold medals than when he lowered the 10-second barrier over 100m for the first time earlier this month.

As for Malcolm, the Briton declared: “I didn’t see Lemaitre coming from behind. I didn’t even hear him come. I missed to dip because I really thought I already had it. But I’m still satisfied with the silver as this year has been pretty difficult for me”.

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