Vilagos, Topic Finish Fourth in Brussels Diamond League
Adriana Vilagos threw the javelin 62.22 meters and Angelina Topic cleared 195 centimeters, both finishing fourth in Brussels, a step from the Diamond League podium.
Fifth round of the women’s javelin final in Brussels, same run up as before, but this time the arm carries the throw differently. Adriana Vilagos releases the javelin and it lands at 62.22 meters, her best throw of the night, and that mark stands as her final result in the Diamond League final.
Getting there was not easy. Vilagos, 22, born in Mali Idjos, drew the first spot in the throwing order, which in javelin usually means the heaviest pressure: she throws first, her result sits on the board, and everyone else gets a chance to catch it in the following rounds. That pressure showed in the first three rounds, 54.93, 54.94 and 55.54 meters, after which she was last in the whole field. The turnaround came only in the fourth round, a throw of 60.42 meters that moved her ahead of Latvia’s Aneta Sijetina and Norway’s Sigrid Borge. The fifth round then produced the best result of the night and, finally, fourth place.
She missed the bronze by 1.85 meters. Third place went to Colombia’s Flor Denis Ruiz Hurtado with 64.07 meters, while gold went to China’s Jan Zija, whose throw of 68.42 meters broke the meeting record. Silver belonged to Japan’s Haruka Kitaguchi, with 65.44 meters.
Topic Missed 199 Centimeters Three Times
While the javelin was still being measured, Brussels was staging a second Serbian story. Angelina Topic entered the high jump at 8:10 p.m., and did so confidently: she cleared 184, 188 and 192 centimeters, each on her first attempt. At 195 centimeters she needed a third try, but she made it, and that secured her a spot among the last four.
There, Topic chose not to jump 197 centimeters and went straight for 199. It proved too big a jump: she knocked the bar down all three times and stayed in fourth place.
Who Won the High Jump Medals?
Third place went to Nikola Olislagers, who also stopped at 195 centimeters but with fewer failed attempts, which is what separated her from Topic. There was a real twist at the top of the standings: gold went to Elenor Paterson, who cleared 201 centimeters and then failed at 203. Yaroslava Mahuchik knocked the bar down three times at that same height of 201 centimeters, so she took silver on an earlier clearance of 199 centimeters, not on the same height as the winner.
What separates the European elite from the world elite shows up in exactly these kinds of details. Topic and Olislagers stopped at the same height, 195 centimeters, and third place was decided by the number of misses at lower heights, not by one extra centimeter. Vilagos missed bronze by a different measure, meters rather than centimeters, but a gap of less than two meters at a world final means she belonged in the same class as the medalists, not behind them.
The Brussels final, held on Saturday, September 5, as part of the 50th edition of the Memorial Van Damme meeting, was the last stop of the 2026 Diamond League season, and for both Serbian athletes a stop with the same number on the scoreboard. Fourth place earned each of them 4,000 dollars, while third place carried 7,000.
What stands out most is that Vilagos and Topic, in the same final meeting but in different disciplines, both finished the exact same distance from the podium: one attempt, one centimeter, or one meter. The Diamond League season closes with this meeting, and the math for next year, starting from these two results, is already being written.
