She was a surprise guest at last year’s IAAF World Championships in Moscow when the French delegation added Stella Akakpo to the entry list at the last minute following her 100m win at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Rieti, Italy.

It is almost three years since she made the podium in the high jump and seven months since she last competed, but the smile is still wide and the ambition as rich as it ever was. Blanka Vlasic is back, and ready to resume her career at the highest level.

It is a production line of golden multi-eventers which stretches back over 40 years, to when Dame Mary Peters won the Olympic pentathlon title in Munich in 1972, and now two more of Great Britain's young stars are showing how bright the future is.

At last year's European Athletics Indoor Championships in Gothenburg, Holly Bleasdale won gold for Great Britain in a jump off in the pole vault when she beat Poland's Anna Rogowska.

Ivan Ukhov and Aleksey Dmitrik demonstrated the incredible standards men’s high jumping is reaching this winter with brilliant performances at the 38th Arnstadt high jump meeting on Saturday.

At the IAAF World Championships last year in Moscow, Mariya Savinova was one of Russia’s big hopes for a gold medal. She was the Olympic 800m champion and defending World champion, a woman with a record of unblemished success.