13 March 2009

Jessica Ennis (Toni Minichiello) and Dwain Chambers (Daniel Plummer) won two spectacular gold medals on the afternoon of the second day of competition at the World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar, the first in the trophy cabinet for GB&NI.

Ennis’ record breaking points tally in the pentathlon cemented her status as the darling of British athletics, elevating her name to the top of the British All Time indoor list and adding an indoor title to her World Championship gold won in Berlin last summer. While Chambers backed up his big hopes with a 6.48 dash to win the 60m final and make him the fastest man in the world so far this year.

In the final two events of the tough one-day schedule Ennis set a new personal best of 6.44m in the long jump and ran herself into the record books with a personal best of 2:12.55 in the 800m, although she was looking for 2:08.74 which would have set a new world record.

She said: “I’m really pleased; it was amazing to come here and compete against a top world class field. I did have the record in my sights and it would have been phenomenal. I left it all on the track but unfortunately I didn’t get it. It’s so close.”