Hayley Jones and Alex Nelson both struck gold over 200m, team captain Perri Shakes-Drayton broke the UK Junior Women’s 400m hurdles record to earn a silver medal, Stephanie Twell ran the bravest track race of her 17 years to win 1500m silver and Luke Fagan and Toby Ulm added bronze medals for the Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland team on the third day of the European Junior Championships in Hengelo, Netherlands, on Saturday 21 July.

It meant the team will go into the last day in third place in the medals table behind two much bigger squads, Russia and Germany.

It’s the first time in the 19 editions of these championships that GB sprinters have won both 200m titles – and the team’s equivalent of ‘Little and Large’ succeeded in totally different ways.

Little ‘Ms Dynamite’ Hayley Jones (Wigan AC) – at 5 foot 3.5 inches tall the smallest of the women in her final – cause a false start and yet sprang from her blocks so quickly when the race finally got underway that she was never headed.

She crossed the line in 23.37 seconds – a personal best by a fifth of a second – a full four metres ahead of her nearest challenger. The other medals went to: 2 Yelizaveta Bryzhina (Ukraine) 23.66; 3 Inna Eftimova (Bulgaria) 23.78.

“I have never been so nervous in my life,” Jones said. “I have no idea how I ran so fast but I do know it was for my Nan. She died in March and I promised her I would come out here. I never thought I was going to win it I’m sure she was here with me.

“My bend was spot-on. I never expected to come off the bend in front. Then I expected them to come back at me. But I never saw anybody.”

And within minutes, she was having to share the celebratory Union Jack with the Men’s 200m Champion – the team’s quietly spoken giant, Alex Nelson (Sale Harriers Manchester).

His race was the precise opposite of the Jones procession. Julian Reus (Germany) led into the straight and was initially announced as the winner – only for the electronic timing to give the verdict to Nelson by a fairly emphatic margin … with Fagan (Enfield and Haringey) thrillingly third.

The result of the race (wind: -1.0) was: 1 Nelson 20.83; 2 Reus 20.87; 3 Fagan 21.08.

“The guy on the tannoy is usually right,” said Nelson. “All the way along the straight Reus was slightly in front and I was thinking, ‘I’m going to get you, ‘You’re not having me’, ‘You’re not beating me. – and basically I won it on the dip. I just fell over really.”

He added that he was spurred on by the memory of being edged into a silver medal position by his GB team mate Harry Aikines-Aryeetey (Sutton and District AC) at the 2005 World Youth Championships: “On the line, I was thinking of Harry. I was not going to let that happen again!”

Nelson went on to pay tribute to his coaches, Chris Brackstone and Graham Knight: “They both said I had to get out and stay with him on the bend because on paper he is quicker than me over 100. But I like to think I can catch anybody when it really matters. And he was just not going to beat me.”