Athletics: Ashia tames Europe - now for the world

Munich 2002: Britain's leading triple jumper leaves it agonisingly late to completes a double golden celebration

Having taken a Commonwealth title and now a European crown in her arching stride, it just remains for Ashia Hansen to complete the final step of her long-term triple jump mission by claiming a major outdoor gold at global level.

That chance will come next sumer at the World Championships in Paris and the summer after at the Olympics in Athens. For the time being, though, the Birchfield Harrier can bask in the glow of the golden double she has achieved in the space of 10 days in Manchester and Munich.

In the City of Manchester Stadium Hansen had shown her competitive class producing a last-round jump of 14.86m, her best for three years, to overcome Francoise Mbango of the Cameroon. Yesterday, in Munich's Olympiastadion, she showed even greater mettle. Trailing from the first round to a stunning first-round effort of 14.83m by the Finn Heli Koivula, the 30-year-old was staring in the face of an unexpedcted defeat all the way to her final dramatic jump.

Koivula started the competition with a personal best of only 14.36m. For the quantum hop, step and jump she took with her first attempt she had Steve Backley to thank. The pair broke their engagement last year because they felt they would benefit from focusing solely on their respective athletics careers. How right they were.

Last August Backley failed to qualify for the javelin final at the World Championships in Edmonton. On Friday night he became only the second athlete in history to win a fourth successive European title.

As it happened, the 33-year-old man of Kent was stepping on to the podium to collect his gold medal when Koivula was making the jump which realised all the rich potential she had shown as a silver-medal-winning long jumper at the World Junior Championships back in 1994.

It was a first-round blow straight out of the Backley manual and knocked Hansen so far off stride, after registering marks of 14.54m and 14.60m, that she recorded three fouls, leaving her 0.23m down going into the sixth and final round. It would have hardly settled the nerves of a lesser competitor that she ventured well beyond the 15m mark while stepping marginally over the take-off board in the fifth round.

Natural frustration was put to one side, though, as Hansen focused on the run-way, hit the board to perfection and landed precisely at the 15m point. It was her first 15m jump in outdoor competition for five years and her first indoors our out since 1999.

More importantly, it won another glittering gold for the woman who was born an American at Evansville, Indiana. "I thought it was a no-jump," she said. "I was about to abort it, but I kept on going just in case. When I saw 15.00 on the scoreboard I thought, 'Oh my god'. I'd been saying to myself all along, 'I don't want to go home with the silver medal.

"Heli's jump was a bit of a shock but it put the pressure on and that's what I responded to in the end. It's absolutely brilliant to win like this – especially after Manchester. It's so good to have everything behind me."

That was a veiled reference to the distressing affair that led to Chris Cotter, Hansen's former boyfriend, being jailed for faking a racist attack, and also to the serious Achilles tendon injury that at one point threatened to curtail Hansen's career. Now, quite clearly, she is on course for a serious Olympic challenge two years hence, not to mention a place on the podium in Paris next year and at the World Indoor Championships on home ground in Birmingham in March.

The Germans in the women's marathon yesterday found home ground very much to their liking yesterday. Luminita Zaituc and Sonja Oberem both finished among the medals. They had to settle for silver and bronze, though, as Maria Guida of Italy raced clear to victory in the second half of the course in 2hr 26min 05sec. It was a championship record for the 36-year-old Neopolitan, who took the opportunity to release the frustration of her wasted trip to the London Marathon in April.

Guida had been hired to set the pace from Blackheath to halfway but was rendered redundant when Paula Radcliffe took off so fast none of the designated pacemakers could keep up with her. She made up for that disappointment yesterday, though she almost came to grief on two occasions while attempting to grab water bottles at drink stations, swerving and very nearly stumbling to the ground as she missed her grasp.

Still, she got the chance to savour a winning run into the Olypiastadion – unlike the winner of the last major championship marathon to finish there. Frank Shorter arrived on the track at the 1972 Olympics to find an impostor had stolen his thunder.