Pichardo jumped once in Birmingham, then sat down and won silver
Portugal left the European athletics championships with three medals — Pedro Pichardo's triple jump silver, plus bronzes for Fatoumata Diallo and Patrícia Silva — and four national records that nobody medalled for.
Pedro Pichardo opened the Birmingham triple jump final with 17.76 metres. He took two more attempts, improved on neither, and then waved away his fourth, fifth and sixth. He watched the rest of it from the side. The silver held.
Italy’s Andy Díaz took gold by 39 centimetres with 18.15 metres, an Italian record and the fastest mark in the world this year. Andrea Dallavalle, also Italian, completed the podium on 17.37. For Pichardo this is an exact repeat of Rome 2024, and his tenth medal at a major championship across Olympics, Worlds and Europeans, indoor and out. The federation’s own count now puts him level with Rui Silva as the fourth most decorated Portuguese athlete at that level.
The other two ran for theirs
Fatoumata Diallo opened Portugal’s account with bronze in the 400 metres hurdles, clocking 53.55 seconds for a national record. Patrícia Silva closed it on Sunday, also in bronze, over 1,500 metres — 4:09.22, taken with a finishing burst that picked off two rivals inside the last few metres. Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell won in 4:07.78, ahead of Poland’s Klaudia Kazimierska.
Three medals, three athletes, three events with almost nothing in common. That spread is unusual for a Portuguese track team, which has historically bunched in the middle distances and the jumps.
The results that missed the medal table
This is where the week gets interesting. In a single morning, on day five, Portugal broke four national records — three senior, one under-23 — and not one of them belongs to a medallist.
The women’s 4x100 metres relay — Lorène Bazolo, Tatjana Pinto, Beatriz Castelhano and Arialis Martinez — ran 43.06 seconds to qualify seventh fastest, then lost the baton on a changeover in the final. In race walking, Vitória Oliveira cut the national half-marathon record to 1:36:10 and Joana Pontes the marathon mark to 3:41:36. Eduardo Camarate set a national under-23 half-marathon walk record of 1:30:12.
Then there is Jéssica Barreira, twelfth in the heptathlon on 6,210 points. That is the best Portuguese result ever in a women’s combined event — four places and 260 points better than Lecabela Quaresma’s sixteenth in Berlin in 2018. Agate de Sousa finished two centimetres off the long jump podium on 6.96 metres.
Put that beside the pool a fortnight ago, when Portugal reached seven all-time European swimming medals, and the same shape appears in two different sports: a generation that no longer turns up at these championships simply to be there.
Isaac Nader, world 1,500 metres champion in Tokyo last year, was the discordant note. He led the field at one point in the final and finished twelfth.
By Vasco Almada
Photo: Indigo Nolan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
