? Britain's defending champion recovers from slow start
? Challengers may have edge over final three disciplines
It was, Jessica Ennis admitted, "a stressful first day". And the second could be tougher still. Ennis has a 151-point lead over Russia's Tatyana Chernova, who won the bronze at the Beijing Olympics. But Chernova jumps longer, throws the javelin further and is almost two seconds quicker over 800m. If Ennis is going to become the first Briton to defend a title in the history of the world championships, she will need to be at her very best.
Nataliya Dobrynska, the Olympic Champion, is in fourth place behind the American Hyleas Fountain, and she too has a better jump and javelin throw than Ennis. The gold medal could be won and lost over the course of two excruciating laps of the track on Tuesday night.
"Today has proved that it is so tight," Ennis said. "I don't think I am many points up and it is going to be tough tomorrow because those girls have strong second days. I need to make sure I am completely on it. I hit two or three hurdles and have a massive bruise on my knee but I will be all right."
In the morning session she was completely off it. Before the world championships started Ennis had said that the fact she was defending champion only added to the pressure she felt. And in the first two events that showed. She clattered into the second barrier in the 100m hurdles and was unusually mediocre in the high jump. They are Ennis's two strongest events and typically she finds herself leading the competition after they have been completed. This time, however, she found herself in third place. She was 41 points behind Fountain, who won the silver in Beijing. She is so accustomed to leading from the front that this was a real shock.
At that point her fans shared an ominously queasy feeling about her chances. Fountain beat Ennis by 0.01sec in the hurdles, the first time she has lost a heptathlon hurdles competition since the 2006 European Championships. Similarly her 1.86m was her worst high jump performance since that same competition. Chernova and Dobrynska both ran personal bests, which seemed to magnify her mistakes.
But Ennis proved she is made of sterner stuff than those who were worrying about her. In the afternoon disciplines she was brilliant and that bodes well for the rest of the event. She recorded a personal best in the first round of the shot, with a distance of 14.67m. In fact all three of her efforts were a good deal farther than any she had managed outdoors before. That pushed her back up to first. Then she won the 200m in 23.27sec, 0.16sec shy of her personal best but still good enough to make her the fastest woman in the field by a distance.
"I knew it was going to be tough," Ennis said. But not, it seemed, as tough as it turned out to be. "In the hurdles I didn't start well, hit some hurdles, lost balance, just didn't get the time that I wanted." Tempting as it would have been to use the bruise on her knee as an excuse for her poor high jump, she said she had hardly noticed it. Instead she just felt she "didn't have the ping that I normally do" in the intense heat and humidity of the late morning.
After her bad start she was desperate to come back. "It was very frustrating. It's a position I'm not used to being in and I felt really frustrated with myself, so I wanted to make it right and get back to that first position. I was nervous and wanting to make up and get those points back that I had lost, so I was very happy to get that PB in the shot."
Her coach, Toni Minichiello, seemed quite relaxed about her chances. "She's only 34 points off her score in Barcelona," he pointed out after the high jump, recalling her performance at the European Championships last year, where she finished with the gold. "And that was a personal best, so she's got plenty of chances to make it up." Her score at the end of the day, 4,078, was only two points off the tally she had at the Europeans.
Away from the top of the field the Commonwealth champion, Louise Hazel, had a superb day. She recorded personal bests in the high jump and the hurdles, as well as a season's best in the shot. That put her 16th overall. She will not win as many headlines as her team-mate but she should be even happier with her performance.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/aug/29/jessica-ennis-heptathlon-world-championships
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