An untimely bout of COVID-19, however, means that the long jumper who was set to become one of the Munich 2022 European Championships poster girls, Malaika Mihambo, is entered more in hope than expectation having been unable to train since jumping 7.12m to retain her world title in Eugene last month.

The presence on the final entries list of the Olympic 100 metres champion, Marcell Jacobs, adds a huge and intriguing element to the sprints at the Munich 2022 European Championships.

The 27-year-old Italian earned a surprise victory at last summer’s Tokyo 2020 Games, although his earlier win at the European Athletics Indoor Championships indicated his rising potential having switched from long-jumping.

In March this year he beat the defending world indoor champion Christian Coleman of the United States to the 60m title in Belgrade, but Jacobs’ outdoor season has been undermined by muscle problems and he was unable to contest last month’s World Championships in Eugene.

It will be a huge feature of the Munich 2022 athletics programme if he can toe the line in the 1972 Olympic stadium - and it will be fascinating to see what degree of fitness he has been able to reclaim.

Meanwhile Britain’s Zharnel Hughes stands ready to defend the 100m title he won in Berlin four years ago in a Championship record of 9.95.

Hughes will also fancy his medal chances in the 200m, where Mitchell-Blake, silver medallist four years ago, is also entered.

Turkey’s defending champion Ramil Guliyev, who has a best of 19.76, has run 20.21 this year.

But the most intriguing presence will be that of 18-year-old Israeli runner Blessing Afrifah, who earned the world under-20 title in Cali earlier this month in a personal best of 19.96, and in so doing beat Botswana’s hugely favoured Letsile Tebogo, who had earlier won the 100m title in a world under-20 record of 9.91 despite showboating over the final 30 metres.

Afrifah was born in Tel Aviv and raised in Israel to parents from Ghana - his father came to Israel as an employee of the Ghanaian consulate - and was granted permanent residence in 2010.

Will this hugely talented young runner be able to adapt to the pressures of a senior international competition? It will be fascinating to see.

Sandra Perkovic will seek a historic sixth successive women’s discus title in Munich.

The 32-year-old Croatian, Olympic champion in 2012 and 2016, made history in her event last month in Oregon as she became the first athlete in the women’s discus to win five world medals - starting at Moscow 2013, where she won the first of her two world titles.

In so doing, Perkovic earned sweet revenge over the American who took her Olympic women’s discus title last year, Valarie Allman, as she beat her to world silver in Eugene with a season’s best of 68.45m.

That was not quite enough to prevent China’s Bin Feng earning a surprise win after adding more than three metres to her personal best with her first-round throw of 69.12m.

But it clearly meant a huge amount to Perkovic, who has been like a tigress robbed of its cubs since Tokyo.

And now she arrives in Munich with renewed confidence.

If she is successful in the stadium constructed to host the Munich 1972 Olympics she will become the athlete with the most European titles at one event - male or female - surpassing the mark of five she shares with Poland’s Olympic hammer throw champion Anita Wlodarcyzyk, out of action this season after injuring her leg while apprehending someone who tried to steal her car, and Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, who won five long jump titles for the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1971.

Meanwhile Britain’s world 1500m champion Jake Wightman, who added Commonwealth 1500m bronze for Scotland last Saturday, is "excited" to be running the 800m, where he will be targeting Tom McKean’s longtime Scottish record of 1:43.88 and seeking to round his season off with another title.

Wightman added at today’s pre-event press conference that he will seek to double at next year’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest.

"This year I get a wild card to go to the worlds next year to do the 1500m, so I’d love to see if I can get into the 800m trials next year.

"I see myself as a middle distance athlete rather than just a 1500m athlete, the same way that some athletes are 1500m and 5,000m guys."

The Norwegian who will defend both those European titles here, 21-year-old Olympic 1500m champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen, has since commented that he lost to an inferior athlete in Eugene.

Asked to respond today, Wightman said: "It wasn’t the nicest thing to say I don’t think. 

"In that moment I couldn’t care less. 

"I’d won the world champs, so if he thinks I’m a worse athlete then I probably am throughout the year. 

"For the rest of the season I might be a worse athlete - but on that one evening I wasn’t the worst."

Norway’s world, Olympic and European 400m hurdles champion Karsten Warholm, who put himself on the line at last month’s World Championships in what was his first competition since tearing a hamstring one hurdle into his opening competition of the year at the Rabat Diamond League, is doing the same again.

Warholm, who faded to seventh in the world final, commented at the press conference: "It’s a law of nature - what goes up must come down.

"That’s where I’m at.

"But I’m still hoping to bounce back.

"It’s been a tough journey this season but I’ve been getting in some good work after Eugene and I’m looking forward to running here."

One place to his right sat Femke Bol of The Netherlands, who added world silver last month to Olympic bronze in the women’s 400m hurdles, and who will attempt a double with the 400m flat in Munich - as Warholm did without success, at least in the 400m flat, at the last Championships in Berlin.

"The 400m and the 400m hurdles is a hard double," Bol said.

"I’m not sure how often I will do it any more in my life, but I have the chance to do it right now."

Asked about her prospects given his own experience in Berlin, Warholm responded: "Don’t remind me!

"It’s the same double and I love that she’s doing it.

"I think she can pull it off."

In the 400 metres Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith appears well set to defend the title he won in Berlin.

After years of injury that were so testing that he admitted he has had suicidal thoughts at one point, the 27-year-old has returned to form in a big way this year.

Having taken a hundredth of a second off the 1997 British record of 44.36 set by Iwan Thomas, who won the European title the following year, Hudson-Smith - running on his home track as a member of Birchfield Harriers since 2006 - earned Commonwealth silver in Birmingham, clocking 44.81.