At the Diamond League final, which is contested only by the top performers of the recent meetings, Patrizia van der Weken finished fourth in the 100m on Saturday. Ruben Querinjean also placed fourth in the 3,000m steeplechase.
Van der Weken finished fourth in a time of 11.08 seconds, narrowly missing out on a podium finish. She was 0.03 seconds off her season's best and 0.08 seconds off her own national record.
The race went to Jamaica's Tina Clayton (10.93), ahead of Britain's Amy Hunt (11.06) and the United States' Sha'Carri Richardson (11.07).
For van der Weken, it was the third year in a row that she had qualified for the Diamond League final in Brussels. Ahead of the race, the Luxembourg sprinter had been in fourth place in the overall women's 100m standings. Her final position in that ranking has yet to be confirmed.
Van der Weken was, by her own account, a little on edge before the start. The warm-up track had an unusual bounce to it, as the Luxembourg athlete explained.
The result and the placing were nevertheless favourable. The time of 11.08 seconds represented her third-fastest performance of the season, only two hundredths behind four-time European champion from Birmingham Amy Hunt, and only one hundredth behind three-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist Sha'Carri Richardson.
Only Clayton managed to dip under 11 seconds. The Jamaican thus took this prestigious final. Van der Weken was the second-best European on show, comfortably ahead of indoor European and world champion Zaynab Dosso and Belgian sprinter Delphine Nkansa.
Ahead of the meeting, coach Arnaud Starck had said he would be satisfied with a top-five finish. The Luxembourg athlete was actively supported in Brussels by athletics associations CAPA Ettelbruck and the Cal Spora Luxembourg (CSL).
In the 3,000m steeplechase final, Querinjean also came home fourth on Saturday evening, in a time of 8 minutes, 11 seconds and 97 hundredths. That left him more than 6 seconds outside the national record he had recently set. Even so, the result showed that the Luxembourg runner is capable of hanging on to the very best. What the European silver medallist still lacks most, at this level, is refinement in his hurdling technique. On one occasion he got caught on a hurdle, and on another he clipped a Kenyan runner in passing.
The victory went to Ethiopia's Gemechu Godana, whose time of 8:08.67 saw him prevail over Morocco's Soufiane El Bakkali (8:10.03) and Kenya's Simon Koech (8:11.15).
Querinjean had gone into the final in 11th place in the 3,000m steeplechase standings, though here too the final classification has yet to be confirmed.
