Athletics: Rooney fright

Martyn Rooney overcame a fright in the 400m before qualifying for Thursday's final at the European Championships in Barcelona.

The 23-year-old could only finish third in his heat and needed to rely on one of the fastest loser spots with a time of 45.00 seconds.

"I made mistakes. I slowed down at 200m for some stupid reason and kicked too early," admitted the Londoner.

"I made silly mistakes, if I'd run the race properly I would have been comfortable but I didn't."

Belgium's Jonathan Borlee set a new national record and fastest time in Europe this year of 44.71 seconds, with France's Leslie Djhone second in 44.87secs.

Season's best

Rooney's team-mate Michael Bingham was more assured in finishing second in his semi-final, the 24-year-old clocking a season's best of 44.88 as he was just overtaken on the line by Ireland's David Gillick (44.79).

But Conrad Williams bowed out as he could only finish sixth in the third semi-final in 46.60.

Perri Shakes-Drayton and Eilidh Child, first and second respectively in the European Under-23 Championships in Lithuania last year, also qualified for the final of the 400m hurdles.

Shakes-Drayton, who lives minutes away from the Olympic Stadium in London, set a new personal best of 54.73 when finishing third in her semi-final, while Child survived a bad stutter at the final hurdle to qualify as a fastest loser in 55.27.

Andy Baddeley and Tom Lancashire were impressive qualifiers for Friday's 1,500m final.

There were four more gold medals decided on Wednesday night along with Christophe Lemaitre's victory in the 100m.

Penultimate throw

Croatia's Sandra Perkovic sprang a surprise as she added the senior European discus gold medal to her junior one.

Last year's junior champion claimed victory with her throw of 64.67m, the penultmate one of the competition.

Ineta Radevica of Latvia beat Naide Gomes of Portugal on countback to win the women's long jump.

Radevica and Gomes, the world indoor champion, both leaped 6.92m with a strong tail wind but the Latvian won her first major gold because of a longer second-best jump.

Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey cruised to the women's 10,000m gold medal to go with the Olympic silver she won in Beijing.

She made her break for glory early and maintained a sizable lead to win in 31 minutes, 10.23 seconds with defending champion Inga Abitova's late surge earning her the silver ahead of Jessica Augusto of Portugal.

In the men's hammer throw, Ibor Charfreitag of Slovakia hurled 80.02m to win gold. Nicola Vizzoni of Italy was second, with Krisztian Pars of Hungary third.