UK Athletics chief Neil Black is full of optimism about the state of the Great Britain team, even if it took an 11th-hour disqualification for them to meet their minimum medal target at the World Championships in Moscow.
Britain were awarded their sixth medal long after the fans had filed out of the Luzhniki Stadium and the athletes had returned to the team hotel.
The women’s 4×100 metres relay team were upgraded to bronze to help make up for the disappointment of seeing the men stripped of their medal of the same colour following the now-customary baton changeover error.
It meant Britain left Russia with three golds a joint record tally for a World Championships with 1993 in Stuttgart thanks to Mo Farah and Christine Ohuruogu and three bronzes.
The target set by UK Sport for the championships was six to eight medals.
“I really feel inherently positive,” said Black, UKA performance director and acting head coach.
“I’m so excited and enthusiastic. I’m a realist, it’s been a tough year and this is the World Championships, we’ve got to remember that.”
The year after London 2012 was always going to be difficult as the sport started its build-up to the next Olympics in Rio in 2016, and the World Championships in London in 2017, and athletes re-evaluated their future.
Black termed it a “transition year” and as well the team were hit by more than their fair share of injuries, with the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill missing in Moscow.
Black hailed the 18 top-eight finishes by British athletes as “an enormous achievement” and said the athletes who missed out would return even hungrier for success.
He added: “It was great to see Tiffany Porter (who won bronze in the 100m hurdles) replacing a Robbie Grabarz (the Olympic high jump bronze medallist who finished eighth) and I’m sure Robbie will have learnt from this championship and will be even more determined going forward.”
Fitness issues also ruined the build-up to the event for defending 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene, who went out in the semi-finals, while, in the women’s event, Perri Shakes-Drayton suffered a knee injury in the final which led to her finishing seventh and having to fly home.
Perhaps the most exciting British performance of the championship came from another athlete who did not win a medal, but Adam Gemili’s fifth place in the 200m final offered such huge promise for the future.
He ran 19.98 seconds in the semi-finals, becoming only the second Briton ever to break the 20secs barrier, and was praised in the medallists’ press conference by Usain Bolt.
“In the last few days he demonstrated he had moved on to another league,” said Black of the 19-year-old who reached the 100m semi-finals at London 2012.