Kent's Adam Gemili won gold in the 200m final and the 4x100m relay at European Championships.

Gemili recorded a sub-20 second time to romp to victory.

It is a career high for the 20-year-old Dartford athlete, who also took silver in the final of the 100m at the Commonwealth Games.

Gemili’s broad smile lit up the Letzigrund Stadium in Zurich not once but twice last week as he mounted the top step of the rostrum to be awarded European Athletics Championships gold medals, writes Alan Newman.

The Blackheath and Bromley Harrier from Dartford ran an exuberant 200m final against a stiff breeze in 19.98 seconds to become the first British athlete to legally dip below 20 seconds on more than one occasion.

The lightning fast track was damp following one of many rain storms in Switzerland and the headwind was measured at 1.6m-per-second, so the British record of 19.87 seconds – set by John Regis when Gemili was less than a year-old – is clearly on borrowed time based on this evidence.

Gemili’s golden moment arrived late on a cool Friday night following his dominant passage through the qualifying rounds.

The fastest heat (20.39) and semi-final (20.23) times gave the best of European sprinters little hope in the final and the winning margin of 0.17sec over French champion, Christophe Lemaitre, was equally as impressive as the winning time.

This was Britain’s fifth gold medal of the evening and an historic landmark as it was the 100th British gold achieved in the 76-year history of the European Championships.

Gemili’s room-mate in Zurich was his training partner and new European 100m champion, James Dasaolu, who helped to inspire him.

Shortly after his 200m victory he said: “I’m really happy I equalled my PB in quite cold conditions into a little bit of a headwind. I’m just so pleased I was able to come out here and... well, European champion – it’s mental!

“I just wanted to try win. I had the big man Christophe in the lane inside of me and I knew he’d be coming, so I tried to just run the bend as I usually do and hang on for dear life.

“I could hear the footsteps coming and you could probably see the tension in my face but then I crossed the line and saw a sub 20 and I was gob-smacked! My training partner James won the 100m and when he came back in to the room I thought, right it would be good to bring the 200m back and have both the one and the two in our camp. I’m proud I could do it for the rest of my team.”

Gemili was rested for the heats of the 4x100m relay but ran the glory final leg on Sunday as the British quartet won their first championships since 2006.

James Ellington, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey and Richard Kilty put Gemili in with a chance of gold as he set off alongside Germany. Gemili powered away to victory in a fast 37.93sec to equal the best European time this year.

After the race Gemili paid tribute to his well drilled squad.

He said: “It was great – medalling individually is great but doing it with a team is amazing. We’re all mates and we trust each other and it’s really a pleasure to hold on and make sure we weren’t run down. These guys did all the work and I just had to make sure I didn’t let go of it.”