I seem to have started to name the respective competition evenings at the IAAF World Championships so I'll carry on by calling last night "favourites' night".

The finals are coming thick and fast as we come to the end of the week and last night's events included four of them. The women's high jump was the first to start but I'll come back to that as the first event to be decided was the women's 400 m hurdles. Jamaica's Melanie Walker didn't really cause a tremor when she came in ahead of the USA's Lashinda Demus and Trinidad's Josanne Lucas, neither did Ryan Brathwaite of Barbados when winning the men's 110 m hurdles after the big favourite, Dayron Robles from Cuba, disappeared through injury in the semis.

The women's high jump was one of the evening's two high points and it didn't disappoint with Russia's Anna Chicherova wedging herself between the home crowd darling Friedrich and masterful Blanka Vlasic being the only surprise. The event was billed beforehand to be a battle between Friedrich and Vlasic but the Croatian was just too good. Vlasic did cause some excitement though by missing her first attempts at 2.02 and 2.04 but she managed to restore order again with her second attempts at these heights. She didn't even have to try 2.06 as Friedrich missed the height with the one attempt she had left after two misses at 2.04. Chicherova took second place after managing to clear 2.02 on her first try whereas Friedrich needed three. The German impressed me though, especially with her last attempt at 2.02. Just think, all of Germany was watching, the Brandenburg Gate was packed with people watching the big screen and nearly 60,000 were in the Olympic Stadium to witness yet another magical evening for the country. In the middle of all this, a young German girl faces her last attempt to continue her battle for gold and she silences the crowd after putting her finger to her lips and then clears the bar! Her attempt at 2.06 wasn't at all far off either.

I won't go on about the fourth final of the night. Suffice it to say that lightning does indeed strike twice!

All the best.