Other potential winners and medalists were 2009 World and 2012 Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, returning from giving birth to her first child, 2015 European pentathlon champion and 2014 world number one Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Nadine Broersen, Carolin Schäfer, Barbara Nwaba, Nadine Visser and Nafissatou Thiam.

Visser started strongly with two personal bests, her 12.81 hurdles just missing the national record that is almost six years older than she is.

Johnson-Thompson joined her hyphenated British teammate in the medal hunt with a 1.89 high jump and a 200 metres win and personal bests in the other two events.

Lurking in fourth place after the first day was returning silver medalist and world leader Theisen-Eaton who had been struggling through her last couple of events.

Theisen-Eaton injured her groin during the javelin but made it to the start line of the final event intending to run for a medal.

Ikauniece-Admidiņa held on to third place with her Latvian National Record while Boersen and Mokhnyuk suffered several seconds further back.