It was a highlight of a final day’s competition in which her 21-year-old compatriot Keely Hodgkinson retained her 800 metres title and Norway’s Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen completed the successful defence of his 1500 and 3,000m titles by winning at the longer distance in inexorable fashion.

There was a sombre ending to the programme, however, as Spain’s Enrique Llopis required urgent medical attention after lying prone when landing on his head following an awful fall over the final barrier in the men’s 60m hurdles.

He was taken to hospital in a neck brace and the Spanish Athletics Federation reported that he was conscious.

He was later shown on social media talking from his hospital bed.

The final day’s performance saw Britain finish third in the medals table with three golds, with Norway top - for the first time in these Championships - thanks to four golds, and The Netherlands, also with three golds, second.

Sawyers’s fifth-round effort of exactly 7.00m tipped a world-class long jump competition on its head as she landed in what had previously been unknown territory to her, bettering her outdoor best of 6.90m and indoor best of 6.75m.

Serbia’s 32-year-old Ivana Vuleta, seeking to become only the second athlete to win four golds in this event, had taken a first round lead with 6.76m and extended it to 6.79m in the second round, but in the fourth round Germany’s world champion Malaika Mihambo asserted herself with 6.83m.

One round later the German was not even in the medal positions as her three main rivals all hit riches.

Vuleta retook the lead with 6.91 and Larissa Iapichino - whose mother Fiona May won this title for Italy in 1998 - moved into silver medal position on countback as she equalled the national record.

Mihambo had nothing else left in her locker, but with her final effort Iapichino produced something which looked momentarily as if it might threaten Sawyers before it was confirmed as an outright national record of 6.97m.

A defiant final jump of 6.90m from Vuleta made no material difference to her bronze-medal position as the Briton was confirmed as winner.

"I am still a little bit in shock," said Sawyers.

"I have been trying for years and I could not jump seven metres.

"And today it was not even in the back of my mind.

"When it happened, I was like: ‘I do not know what it is but please, be enough!’"

It was a long-awaited triumph for an athlete of rare versatility.

She won silver for Britain in bobsleigh at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics, and as a talented singer-songwriter she went a very long way in ITV’s The Voice UK programme.

After European outdoor silver and bronze and Commonwealth silver, Sawyers now has herself a gold.

Fellow Briton Hodgkinson, as she has done all season, commanded the women's 800 metres race from start to finish, pulling 10 metres clear by the finish as she won in 1min 58.66sec from Slovenia’s Anita Horvat, who clocked 2:00.54.

The Olympic and world silver medallist later broke down in tears as she dedicated her win to the coach who had guided her in her early teens.

"I haven’t had time to process it but my old coach, Joe Galvin, passed away a few days ago," she said.

"Really unexpected.

"This one is definitely for him.

"He had a lot of belief in a 10-year-old me.

"That medal is for him.

"I hope I have made him really proud.

"His wife Margaret, I know she will be proud of me as well."

Ingebrigtsen produced another front-running performance to defend the second of his titles here as he followed up his 1500m win with victory in the 3,000m in a Norwegian record of 7:40.32.

The 22-year-old earned his third consecutive 3,000m title in this event by taking early responsibility for the lead, just as he had in the 1500m, moving to the front in the first third of the race and tightening the screw on a field that first elongated and then broke into little pieces.

Spain’s Adel Mechaal, who won this title in 2017, had been hoping there would be a sign of weakness in the Olympic 1500m champion due to him missing more than a month’s training this year with a viral infection.

There was no weakness - the Spaniard had to settle for silver in 7:41.75.

Mechaal’s team-mate Adrian Ben had better fortunes in the following men’s 800 metres, moving past the bustling figure of Benjamin Robert in the final two strides to win in 1:47.34, with the Frenchman second in the same time and Belgium’s Eliott Crestan taking bronze in 1:47.65.

France’s 31-year-old world decathlon champion Kevin Mayer, 101 points ahead of his 23-year-old rival Sander Skotheim coming into the heptathlon’s concluding 1000m race, limited the Norwegian’s winning margin sufficiently to earn a comfortable victory, finishing with 6348 points to the younger man’s national record of 6318.

For a while in a dramatically fluctuating men’s high jump final it looked as if Ukraine’s 34-year-old Andrii Protsenko, who had to flee his native Kherson with his family last year following the Russian invasion, was about to win his first international gold.

But after taking the lead thanks to a first-time clearance of 2.29m Protsenko could do no more and had to give best to 31-year-old Douwe Amels of The Netherlands, who set a national record of 2.31m after clearing 2.29m at his third attempt.

A day after retaining her individual 400m title, world record holder Femke Bol ran the anchor leg as the Dutch team made a successful defence of their women’s 4x400m title in 3:25.66, comfortably inside the Championship record they set in Torun two years ago.

Individual 400m silver medallist Julien Watrin had brought the baton home victoriously for Belgium in the men’s 4x400m in 3:05.83.

The women’s 60m hurdles was won by Reetta Hurske, who equalled her Finnish record with a time of 7.79sec, and the men’s 60m hurdles title went to Switzerland’s Jason Joseph in 7.41.

Four men finished on 4.80m in the pole vault, with gold going to Norway’s Sondre Guttormsen on countback ahead of Emmanouil Karalis of Greece and Poland’s Piotr Lisek.

Earlier in the day Greece’s Olympic long jump champion Miltiadis Tentoglou won gold with a first-round effort of 8.30m, and the women’s high jump went to Ukraine’s Olympic bronze medallist and double world silver medallist Yaroslava Mahuchikh with 1.98m.