Adriana Vilagoš and Angelina Topić made it a double celebration for Serbia, as they won both won gold at the Bergen 2025 European U23 Championships on Saturday (19).
Bergen 2025 is being live streamed on the European Athletics website courtesy of Eurovision Sport.
Both athletes are already well established at senior level with two European Athletics Championships medal each, so they started as strong favourites in the women’s javelin and women’s high jump respectively.
But they had differing experiences in the sun-soaked Fano Stadion.
Vilagoš led right from her opening round throw and the twice world U20 champion and European silver medallist was untroubled as she took gold. He best effort was a final round flourish of 62.41m. Czechia’s Petra Sicaková won silver with a fifth round 58.14m and bronze went to Germany’s Mirja Lukas with a final round 57.22m.
Topic completes age group set in epic high jump final
In contrast, Topić had to fight every step of the way.
Topić had the opportunity to complete the full set of European age group titles, having also won European U18 gold at Jerusalem 2022 and European U20 gold at Jerusalem 2023.
As European leader and with European silver and bronze medals at senior level in her growing collection, expectations were high on the athlete. a week shy of her 20th birthday. But it was far from a straightforward coronation.
Sweden’s European indoor bronze medallist Engla Nilsson is proving to be one of the breakthrough athletes of the year and Germany’s Joana Herrmann and Cypriot Styliana Ioannidou both produced the form of their life in a fascinating final.
Herrmann and Ioannidou had each reset their personal best twice at 1.89m and 1.91m, whilst Nilsson had a flawless card and led Topic, who had a single failure at 1.91m.
With the bar at 1.93m, Hermann and Ioannidou both failed with three attempts, whilst Nilsson and Topic both cleared it at the first attempt.
Still the Swede held the lead on countback, but at 1.95m, Topic showed her championship class and went clear at the second attempt. Nilsson was unable to summon a clearance over a height that would have been a personal best by 1cm and Topic could celebrate another gold. Herrmann won bronze on countback from Ioannidou.
"Of course, I know all my titles I have already won in various age categories," said Topic afterwards. "It was my secret wish, but I did not want to say that out loud yet, that I wanted to take gold medal in every single age group championships. Now, I have the under 23 European title. I have one more chance in two years, but I did not want to miss this chance today."