Saturday's heroes were Lea Meyer and Bo Kanda Lita Baehre.

The stage was set for them and they played it with flying colors.

In the last competition of the evening, in which Gesa Krause should have put the final point of the evening, the steeplechase runner confidently followed in the footsteps of the absent two-time European champion and, with deafening jubilation, made winning the silver medal a joint effort.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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"The crowds carried me," she enthused, improving her best time by ten seconds.

Pole vaulter Lita Baehre charged frantically towards the curve with his audience after flying 5.85 meters and threw his muscular arms in the air.

He too was carried away by the enthusiasm of the thousands upon thousands, he daringly tried to be carried away by the enthusiasm up to more than 5.95 meters and to surpass the seemingly weightless Armand Duplantis, who flew 6.06 meters.

triumph of the athletes

The magical Tuesday with the title wins of the sprinter Gina Lückenkemper and the decathlete Niklas Kaul as well as the medals for the discus throwers Christin Pudenz and Claudine Vita, the magical Thursday on which Konstanze Klosterhalfen won gold over 5000 meters and Tobias Potye silver in the high jump, Saturday, where the hearts of the German audience belonged to Lea Meyer and Bo Kanda Lita Baehre, and the conclusion on Sunday evening with gold for javelin thrower Julian Weber and the women's sprint relay - the success of this European Athletics Championships as well as the comprehensive European Championships, which brought the whole of Munich into one Olympiapark were as much a triumph of the athletes as one of the directors.

Before her arrival in the middle of the week, she watched the championships on television, Lea Meyer said: "I had goosebumps.

I cried in front of the screen.

And the athletes told me: the audience carries you and when you can't go on, they push you.” That's how it happened.

At the European Championships, yes, there is no competition from Jamaica and America, from Africa and Asia.

But there are better chances of medals, and athletes win them before their people.

Around eighty fans and friends of the runner Alina Reh, for example, traveled from Ulm with the 9-euro ticket.

Konstanze Klosterhalfen's high school graduation class from Königswinter had arranged to travel to Munich to cheer and cheer.

It wasn't just the medals that counted, but those who won them.

What do world-class performances or the lack of them mean when there is pure joy in the stadium and in the stands?

If the admission prices hadn't been so high, the 70,000 seats in the Olympic Stadium would have been full on a regular basis.

Sign for Olympics?

For 130 million euros, three quarters of which came from taxpayers, Munich got a revived Olympic stadium with Olympic grounds, a week-and-a-half festival of sports, glorious television pictures – and a refreshed Olympic debate.

He hopes, said Joachim Herrmann, Interior Minister of Bavaria from the CSU, that this event is a sign that we will again host the Olympic Games in Germany.