James Nolan is the newest name to join the elite of European middle distance running after producing a performance of character and class to take the silver medal behind Spain's Jose Redolat in the 1,500 metres final on Saturday.
After an unusual exercise in self indictment in the analysis of his semi-final run on Friday, the UCD athlete's confidence was flowing by the time he lined up with Redolat for the biggest race of his career.
Inevitably, the Spaniard's wider experience told in the end as he crossed the line in three minutes 40.51 seconds, more than a second faster than Nolan.
Yet, given the Irishman's inexperience at the distance, it had been a highly encouraging run, promising enough to untap some expansive comment as he reflected on the day's drama.
"I've done this off just one winter's work and it makes me believe that with more work and experience, I can have a lot more success at 1,500 metres," he said. "People may laugh but I believe that in two years time I'll be running three minutes 30 seconds for the distance.
"It's not going to happen for the next Olympic Games but already I'm looking at the one after that. It doesn't mean that I'm finished with 800 metres running. In fact, I'll be going 50-50 on the 800 and 1,500 this season but at the moment, I seem to be doing better at the longer distance."
In finishing second, Nolan added his name to those of Frank Murphy, Ray Flynn and Marcus O'Sullivan, all of whom have finished second in this championship. Only Eamonn Coghlan, at Vienna 21 years ago, succeeded in winning the title for Ireland but with some 450 metres remaining in Saturday's race, it looked as if Nolan might join him.
Unlike the semi-final on Friday, he was running fluently throughout, sacrificing yardage to travel in an outside lane for much of the race. The tactic worked so well that with the exception of Redolat, no one was moving better in the secondhalf of the race.
At one point, the Spaniard who had finished last in this championship two years ago, appeared to have lost his rhythm. But when the pressures came with 400 metres to go, his response was authoritative and decisive.
In a matter of strides, he got away from the Frenchman Medhi Baala, and with Baala clearly tieingup, Nolan wasn't standing on ceremony as he forced a way past in a brave but forlorn chase of the new champion. Sinead Delahunty, the Kilkenny athlete based in Boston, dug deep for the best championship race of her career in the women's 1,500 metres final but still finished just out of the medals in fourth place.
For the first time, perhaps, Delahunty was wholly comfortable in a championship final, covering the breaks easily and looking all over a medallist until her lack of speed training betrayed her in the closing stages.
Karen Shinkins left Ghent with a new national record of 52.80 seconds and the kind of championship experience which can sustain her in Sydney in seven months time, after finishing fourth in the 400 metres final.
The Kildare woman's progression has been one of the features of domestic competition over the last two years and she illustrated the point here by reducing her Irish record to 52.80 seconds in the semi-final on Saturday.
She never quite reproduced that form in finishing fourth behind the new champion, Svetlana Pospelova in a time of 53.15 seconds yesterday. But overall, this was a valuable learning exercise. Sadly, Brendan Reilly's challenge for the high jump championship was over before the real action had begun. It had all started so promisingly for him in the qualifying rounds on Saturday when he soared over at 2.21 metres and again at 2.25 metres, both at the first attempt to book his place in the final.
That appeared to presage heroics in the making but as it transpired, he failed in all three attempts at 2.27 metres after surprisingly skipping the earlier heights and had already packed his bags when Vyacheslav Veronin emerged to embellish a great Russian tradition in this event.
