Jessica Ennis has the British record in sight after a superb end to the opening day of the heptathlon in Gotzis.
Briton extends lead in Gotzis after PB in 200m
Jessica Ennis has the British record in sight after a superb end to the opening day of the heptathlon in Gotzis.
The Sheffield athlete saved the best for last with a a brilliant new personal best of 22.88 seconds in the 200 metres, taking 0.23secs off her previous best set here last year.
That gave her a lead of 221 points over Lithuania's Austra Skujyte, with world champion Tatyana Chernova of Russia another eight points behind in third.
"I've been trying to run under 23 (seconds) for so long," Ennis said. "I just felt I'd done some really good training the last few weeks, a lot of hard running sessions that have paid off, so I'm really really happy with that."
Ennis' total of 4,113 points was just 11 behind her best first-day total from when she won the world title in Berlin in 2009, but significantly 33 ahead of her total at the European Championships in Barcelona the following year.
On that occasion she went on to set her personal best of 6,823, just eight points shy of Denise Lewis's British record, which was set in France in 2000 before she won Olympic gold in Sydney.
"I'm honestly not thinking about it yet, I just want to focus on getting the next three events right and then we'll see at the end of it," she added.
"I would love the British record definitely, but it is just about me preparing the best I can for the summer and making sure I am confident and I've built on what I've done in the indoors and last year. That's more important to me at the moment."
Capable
Asked about her large lead after the opening day, Ennis added: "I am quite surprised because it's Olympic year and I expected everyone to be on top of their game, but we've seen in previous years that a couple of athletes aren't quite there at this stage but they improve a lot by the summer.
"It's a nice position to be in and I want to have a really good second day now. I just need to come back and do what I know I'm capable of doing in the long jump, javelin and running a good 800 metres."
Ennis made the perfect start to her bid for a third straight victory in Austria with her fastest 100 metre hurdles time in a heptathlon, but then had to settle for a best of 1.85m in the high jump.
"It was a good hurdles, fastest I've run in a heptathlon so I was pleased with that, but just so disappointed with my high jump," Ennis said.
"It should be way better than that so it's frustrating. Dobrynska and Chernova didn't jump too well either so there is a little positive to take from it, but I'm still disappointed.
"It just didn't happen. The headwind wasn't great, but I can't blame it on that really."
Great start
Ennis had earlier shrugged off the bizarre reports that a senior figure at UK Athletics had labelled her "fat" with a superb run in the hurdles, and this time there were no nasty surprises.
On her last competitive appearance at the CityGames in Manchester, Ennis seemingly ran a personal best of 12.75 seconds, only to later discover that just nine hurdles instead of the required 10 had been set out on the track.
This time all 10 hurdles were present and correct - her coach Toni Minichiello making a point of counting them personally - and Ennis cleared them all in 12.81secs to win the final heat.
That was just 0.02s outside her personal best and a stadium record, while also being worth a 32-point lead over Canada's Jessica Zelinka at the time.
The high jump is also traditionally one of Ennis's strongest events, but the former world champion was disappointed to only clear 1.85m today, 10cm down on her personal best.
After coming into the competition at 1.76m and clearing her first two heights at the first attempt, Ennis needed two attempts to clear both 1.82m and 1.85m, the latter after making a seemingly successful minor adjustment to her run-up.
However, with a headwind making conditions difficult, she failed all three attempts at 1.88m and was forced to settle for 1,041 points and a total of 2,194.
