The Netherlands’ athletics team achieved its best ever result at the European Athletics Team Championships, finishing fourth behind defending champions Italy.

The Dutch team finished in Madrid behind Italy, Germany and Poland but ahead of France and the UK, beating their previous best finish of sixth in 2014 and 2017.

Team coach Laurent Meuwly praised the strong individual performances, with eight wins in the 37 events and five championship records. “We achieved our target of finishing in the top five and were in contention for the medals right up to the last event,” he said.

The Dutch dominated the relays, with both men’s and women’s quartets setting national records with times of 37.87 and 42.02 seconds respectively.

Femke Bol won the women’s 400 metres, while Jessica Schilder took maximum points in the shot put and Jorinde van Klinken won the discus.

Menno Vloon also topped the rankings in the men’s pole vault to put the Netherlands in first place at the end of the first day.

The team slipped back to fourth on Saturday, when Nadine Visser was edged out in the women’s 100 hurdles, finishing two thousands of a second behind Switzerland’s Ditaji Kambundji.

Another strong Dutch contender, Nick Smit, pulled up after 300m of the 400m hurdles and had to leave the track in a wheelchair.

The best men’s performances came on the final day of the three-day competition, with Xavi Mo-Ajok winning the 200m in a personal best time of 20.01 to become the second fastest Dutch athlete ever behind Churandy Martina.

Niels Laros won the 5,000 metres in a time of 13:44.45 with a well timed sprint finish, while Stefan Nillessen was second in the 1,500m behind Portugal’s Isaac Nader.