Great Britain's Jessica Ennis gets ready to compete in the Pentathlon Shot Put at the 2010 World Indoor Championships (© Getty Images)
Briton Jessica Ennis continued her Pentathlon competition with another good performance to stay in the lead after Shot Put as well.
The Berlin World champion from 2009 produced an indoor personal best 14.01m with her second attempt, the second best result of her career behind Berlin WCh Heptathlon 14.14m result. This was just enough for her to keep the lead after three events with 3021 total points. The 24-year-old still has a small chance to break the world indoor record 4991p and exceed 5000 points but for that she would need to jump a personal best in the long jump, over 6.50m and run a 2 minutes 10 seconds 800m.
Ukrainian Olympic champion Nataliya Dobrynska, as expected, won the shot put with a mighty season’s best 16.43m and moved to second place with 3003 total points. But the Ukrainian has little chance of overtaking Ennis as she is a long jumper of the same caliber as the Briton, but much much slower in the last event, 800 metres. American Hyleas Fountain also did well in the shot put coming close to her personal best with a 14.06m effort, a lifebest in a multievent competition and a little short of 14.26m personal best indoors earlier this season. The 29-year-old is in third place at the moment with 2949 points and is an expectional long jumper with a 6.70m result earlier this season and a massive 6.89m outdoor personal best last summer. And the American will need a good result in the long jump because she too will lose important points in the 800m which has never been her favourite event.
French Antoinette Nana Djimou Ida is in fourth place now with 2874 points following a 13.72m shot put result, but Russian Olympic bronze medalist in heptathlon, Tatyana CHernova really did find her stride finally in the shot put. She added almost a metre to her earlier best with a massive 14.54m throw to give her 2798 points after three events. Chernova is a very good long jumper with a 6.72m personal best indoors this season and even a better 800m runner having run 2:12.70 and a breathtaking 2:06.50 personal best outdoors at the 2008 Olympic Games. The 22-year-old really has a good chance for a medal here.
The other three athletes can’t reach the medals anymore. Russian Marina Goncharova is in sixth place with 2736p and Karolina Tyminska of Poland in seventh having scored 2719p. Latvian Aiga Grabuste has almost collapsed with her pentathlon as she is well behind the others in eighth place having only scored 2376p today.
Mirko Jalava for the IAAF
