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| Great Britain's Jenny Meadows will be looking for her first major outdoor title in Helsinki. |
A surprise name is heading to the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki as the woman to catch in the 800 metres.
She is Irina Maracheva, a Russian who leads the European rankings ahead of three of her teammates and who could take some stopping.
Maracheva ran a personal best of 1:57.82 to win the event at the Russian National team championships at the end of May, a time which makes her the second quickest in the entries in lifetime bests.
Only Tetyana Petlyuk, of the Ukraine, has run faster with 1:57.34 but this season with her leading mark of 2:00.47, Maracheva has the clear advantage.
She is joined by fellow Russian Yelena Arzhakova, whose 1:58.28 puts her fourth on the European rankings but Maracheva's run is the fifth quickest in the world this year so she will be a clear favourite to win the first title of her career.
Maracheva is 27 and she has never made a major championship before but what a way it would be if she started with the gold medal.
Her biggest rival is not yet certain to be there.
Jenny Meadows, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is fighting a fitness battle which has seen her withdraw from this weekend's Olympic trials in Birmingham.
It means, should she go to Helsinki, she might have more than just winning the first major outdoor title of her career, which in itself would be some ask because of her lack of race fitness having not competed this year because of an Achilles injury.
Meadows, who won bronze at the European Championships in Barcelona in 2010, is hoping that the discretion of the British selectors give her the third spot in their team for the Olympic Games in London next month.
But she knows that time is running out.
As Meadows said: 'Every day of my recovery is like a week so the extra few days ahead of Helsinki will make a big difference to the injury and ensure I am able to go out and compete and demonstrate my fitness ahead of selection for London 2012.'
As with the women's 800m, there is a Russian dominance in the 1500m generally in Europe this summer with their athletes have clocked the eight quickest times.
The second best of those is Yekaterina Gorbunova, whose 3:59.89 makes her the only runner in the field to break four minutes this year.
She will be making her debut at the European Championships and of the pack lining up behind Gorbunova, in times at least, one name has an interesting connection.
Laura Weightman, of Great Britain, with a season's and personal best of 4:04.88, is being guided by one of the greatest 1500m runners of them all - the former world champion and world record holder Steve Cram.
Cram, now the lead athletics commentator with the BBC, is Weightman's coach and while he is putting no pressure on her progress, he has been impressed by what he has seen.
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| European U-23 3000m steeple champion Gulcan Mingir of Türkiye. |
'She is keen to learn and easy to coach in that sense, and it has been a case of developing her as an athlete,' said Cram. 'She is a good runner and works really hard.
'I don't harp on about the old days - we do talk about different people's training but I don't say 'go and have a look at how I did it'. It is not that relevant.'
European U23 champion Mingir aims for higher glory
If Cram was one of the golden stars from another era, so was that of McColgan.
Liz McColgan was the 1991 world 10,000 champion but in Helsinki her famous name is set to boom out around the stadium because her daughter Eilish could make her mark in the 3000m steeplechase.
She is 21 and her time of 9:38.45 at this month's Diamond League meeting in Oslo improved her UK Under-23 record and showed the progress that she is making.
The barrier of 9:30 is her next big target and while that may not arrive
just yet, who knows?
That sort of mark would be medal material, as shown by Türkiye's Gulcan Mingir, with a personal best of 9:13.53 which makes her the favourite heading into Helsinki.
She is 23 and in Ostrava last summer won the European under-23 crown, a
victory she will take with her to this next level.
A Physical Education student in the western Turkish city of Kütahya, she is one of so many youngsters who could really shine in the Finnish capital.