One of the busiest weekends of the outdoor season so far once more demonstrated the strength of European athletics' junior stars ...
He is only 19 but there are not too many superlatives left to describe the brilliance of Poland’s Konrad Bukowiecki.
The European junior shot put champion seems to make an impression every time he competes and so that proved in the space of less than 24 hours.
First, Bukowiecki triumphed with 21.01m at the Ostrava Golden Spike on Friday - and only when you put it into perspective, do you realise what a staggering display it was.
Using the senior implement, the distance is a world under-20 record, a European junior record and his closest challenger with 20.84m was fellow Pole Tomasz Majewski, who just happens to be the double Olympic champion.
Further proof of how good the signs are for the future of European shot-putting, never mind the present, was the performance of Romania’s Andrei Toader in third.
He turns 19 on Thursday, and with an effort of 20.32m, he moved to third on the all-time European junior rankings, along with breaking the national under-23 and junior record.
If beating Majewski, who is set to defend his title in Rio, was not enough in itself for Bukowiecki, the next day in Halle he then defeated the double world and European champion, Germany’s David Storl, whose European junior mark he had surpassed.
This time Bukowiecki won with 20.62m from Storl (20.25m) and he is now becoming a major contender for a medal at this summer’s championships.
Polish athletics does indeed find itself in a good place.
As Bukowiecki was winning gold at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Eskilstuna last July, his teammate Maria Andrejczyk, 20, was making an impression of her own with victory in the javelin (59.73m).
In Warsaw on Saturday, she also took her career to another level when she won at the Szelest Memorial with 64.08m to equal the national senior record mark set by Barbara Madejczyk almost a decade ago.
In Hengelo on Sunday, Dafne Schippers lived up to expectation and her own prediction by breaking the meeting record as she won the 200m in 22.03 at the FBK Games.
The time saw the world and European champion improve her world lead from 22.25 and it is all building up so well for the Dutch star with just 44 days to go until the start of the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam.
In the 35th staging of the event, countryman Churandy Martina who won the 100m in 10.12 and ran 10.08 in the heats.
Jessica Ennis-Hill, the Olympic heptathlon champion who pulled out of this weekend’s Hypo-Meeting in Gotzis as she recovers from injury, came through a good test in Loughborough - even if she did finish last.
But her position in the javelin, where she threw 41.69m, did not matter too much. It was all about competing.
'My Achilles actually feels really good,' she said on the BBC. 'The work I have done with the medical team – and the rehab and just making sure we get it right – has really worked.'
It was a good meeting for British sprinter CJ Ujah who won the 100m in 10.07, a European lead and Olympic qualifying time, while beating team-mate and European champion James Dasaolu (10.14), who also achieved the mark for Rio.
The night before in Britain, there was a surprise in the Olympic 10,000m trials in Highgate where Jessica Andrews, 23, triumphed in 31:58.0, breaking her personal best by over 23 seconds in a race where she beat Kenya’s 2009 world champion Linet Masai (32:02.5).
In Hania, Greece’s Elisavet Pesiridou ran a 100m hurdles personal best (13.13) and Dimitrios Tsiamis won the triple jump (16.60m), both securing qualification for the European Athletics Championships.
There are 97 events across Europe this week, including the European Champion Clubs Cup Track & Field Seniors. For full information, go to http://www.european-athletics.org/calendar