Hosts Russia won the European Team Championships Super League title for the fourth time in the six stagings of the competition in Cheboksary on a day when five more event records were broken.

The two big battleships of world rowing met again at the Varese World Cup today – and this time it was the turn of the British men’s eight to have their revenge over the German crew which beat them to the European title last month.

A perfect fourth set of three 10s here in scorching sun and gusting, swirling wind secured Germany’s Karina Winter the women’s individual title in the European Games archery competition.

Britain’s James Heatly won European Games diving gold here in the 3 metres springboard, 61 years after his grandfather Peter Heatly won the same event at the 1954 Vancouver Commonwealth Games.

Hosts Russia hold a five points overnight lead over defending champions Germany, 186-181, in the European Team Championships in Cheboksary followng  the opening day of competition which saw five event records beaten and one equalled.

A day of semi-finals and repechage events at the Rowing World Cup in Varese produced two world best times in the women’s programme.

Mo Farah, whose coach Alberto Salazar was alleged to have engaged in past doping violations involving other athletes in his group by a BBC Panorama programme aired earlier this month, has posted a statement on Facebook insisting he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs, and adding that the last weeks have been “the toughest of my life".

Croatian brothers Valent and Martin Sinkovic, world champions in the men’s double sculls, announced their readiness to defend that title as they won their first race of the season at the second Rowing World Cup in Varese having missed the opening World Cup and subsequent European Championships because of Valent’s back problem.

Svein Arne Hansen, the new European Athletics President, has today made good on his intention to include more women in the organisation in announcing the names of the 14 females appointed to Commissions following last weekend’s Council meeting in Oslo.

Russia took two more gymnastics titles here, but a hat-trick on the seventh day of competition was denied them by Belgium’s trio in the acrobatic women’s group all-round final who earned their country its first gold medal of these European Games.

Media pressure on Mo Farah, whose coach Alberto Salazar was alleged to have engaged in doping violations by a BBC Panorama programme aired earlier this month, has continued to grow with a claim by the Daily Mail that he missed two random drug tests before he won his Olympic 5000/10,000 metres double at the London 2012 Games.

Germany’s Henri Junghaenel defeated a stellar field to earn European Games gold medal in the 50 metre rifle prone men's event here, and the second gold of the day, in the new event of the mixed team trap, went to the Slovakian pairing of Zuzana Rehak Stefecekova and world champion Erik Varga, who earned an emphatic 27-21 win over Russia’s newly crowned men’s champion Alexey Alipov and Elena Tkach.

Honour was satisfied at the European Games here today as Azerbaijan’s Aykhan Taghizade and Britain’s Olympic champion Jade Jones earned gold in the respective under 68 kilogram and under 57kg classes.

Ron Clarke, Australia’s revered Olympic distance runner and more recently Mayor of the Gold Coast, has died aged 78 after a short illness.