Nevin Yanit stormed her way into history books and became the first Turkish sprint hurdles champion taking the gold medal with a national record 12.63 on Saturday.

Perhaps Nevin Yanit is right. Maybe it was meant to happen. But even after she had skimmed over the barriers and into the history books as Turkey’s first sprint hurdles champion, the 24-year-old still could not believe it.

As she glanced at the clock after a wonderfully clean display of hurdling, Yanit’s mouth fell open at the figures. 12.63, it read. Another Turkish record, yes. But this was more significant.

“I cannot believe what happened,” she said. “My room number is 1263, and my phone number ends with these digits. Everything in my daily life here reminds me of this record. It was like an omen for victory. It is crazy.”

Pretty crazy, yes, for this was her second Turkish record of the day and brought her the gold ahead of Derval O’Rourke, who sliced the Irish record down to 12.65 for silver, while the favourite, Carolyn Nytra of Germany, took bronze in 12.68.

O’Rourke, the former world indoor champion, just missed out on gold for the second time, and by just 0.02s, matching the smallest losing margin ever from 1971 when Karen Balzer won gold for Germany.

“I would love to have won and I just was two hundreths away from gold,” said O’Rourke, who shred the silver in 2006. “But I cannot complain as I ran the race of my life and beat the Irish record. Anything that gets the Irish flag out there is brilliant.”

Yanit had shown her intentions in the semis setting up the prospect of a sizzling final. She ran superbly to beat Nytra in the first heat, slicing three-hundredths from her Turkish record in 12.71, just ahead of the German and O’Rourke. Another omen, perhaps.

In the final, Yanot was drawn in three, with Tatyana Dektyareva of Russia and Norway’s Christina Vukicevic between her and Nytra, with O’Rourke in seven.

Yanit was out of the blocks in a flash, but Nytra also started well and the two were almost neck and neck at half way when Yanit’s form saw her edge ahead while O’Rourke came up over the last three barriers to challenge the German.

Yanit dipped at the line, looked left at the clock, and threw her arms up, delighted to have picked up Turkey’s second gold of the championships. She grabbed her national flag and set off on a lap of honour while O’Rourke was overjoyed too. She hadn’t even been in Europe’s top ten before arriving in the Catalan capital but now she had a silver medal.

Nytra, at first, looked downcast. After all, in Paris she had run 0.11s quicker than Yanit’s winning time. Yet soon she joined her opponents to receive the crowd’s cheers. The German says she doesn’t like competing twice in one day, and maybe that concern had been her undoing.

“I think I was a little too excited before my first international final,” she admitted. “The wind troubled me as well. I’m very satisfied with my season but I hoped for more tonight. I could have run faster. Tomorrow I will be happy about the bronze medal.”

It was a great turnaround in fortunes for Yanit. Fate, perhaps? For she had failed to even finish in her heat in Göteborg four years ago.

“In 2006 I dreamt about a gold medal and tonight I am the European champion,” she said.