Report12 Mar 2010


EVENT REPORT - WOMEN's Long Jump Pentathlon

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Jessica Ennis of GBR gets ready to compete in the Pentathlon (© Getty Images)

Briton Jessica Ennis, who has been leading the women’s Pentathlon since the first event, will be crowned World indoor champion after the last event 800m later today. The 24-year-old took the outdoor Heptathlon title in similar fashion in Berlin last summer and she has been in commanding form here too.

There have been many Carolina Klüft–like performances by Ennis, who hasn’t completed all events without a small trouble.

She started the long jump with a disappointing 5.98m and momentarily lost her overall lead during the first round, but kept her composure with a perfect second jump hitting the board exactly where she should and jumped a 6.44m personal best.

This result added 6cm to her indoor best 6.39m from earlier this season and is also one centimetre more than she has jumped outdoors. Ennis is now leading with 4009 points before the last event and will win should she stay on her feet for the whole race.

There will probably not be a World record or first 5000 points score though as the Briton would need almost impossible results to achieve these goals. For the World indoor record 4991 she needs to run 2:08.85 and to further break 5000 points she needs a 2:08.20 result, both of which seem to be well out of her reach today.

The silver medal position however is far from being clear. American Hyleas Fountain started the long jump competition as a favourite for this medal, but she was the only one of the top four athletes in this competition who didn’t reach her normal level jumping 6.46m today.

Fountain was not able to catch Nataliya Dobrynska of Ukraine, the Beijing Olympic champion in Heptathlon, who jumped a good 6.33m result for the second place after four events with 3956 points. Fountain is in third place with 3943p, but she is the weakest of the first four athletes in the 800m and has to fear that Tatyana Chernova of Russia in fourth place will overtake her for the medals in the last event.

A good long jumper, Chernova won this event with 6.62m result and that really does give her the edge. Although the Russian is still 99 points off Fountain’s bronze medal position, she is a much much better 800m runner and should be able to overcome the 7.3 seconds difference between the athletes. Chernova could even challenge Dobrynska for the silver as she is 8.0 seconds behind the Ukrainian.

Jessica Ennis hasn’t really been tested indoors lately, her last 800m race is from March 2007 when she ran 2:17.03 at the European Indoors in Birmingham. But outdoors Ennis has a mark 2:09.88 from last summer and also ran 2:12.22 at the Berlin World Championships.

Tatyana Chernova on the other hand is in different class altogether with a 2:06.50 outdoor best from the Beijing Olympics and has also run 2:10.10 indoors in 2008 – she ran 2:09.11 at the World Championships in Berlin last season.  Nataliya Dobrynska is a bit slower having run 2:12.96 outdoors last season, but Fountain will have a lot of work to do – her best is 2:15.32 outdoors in 2007.

Antoinette Nana Djimou Ida of France jumped well reaching 6.34m today for a total of 3830p and fifth place. But she is a 800m runner around 2:20 results and will not challenge Chernova who is only 14 points above her in the rankings.

In sixth place is Polish Karolina Tyminska, who has fallen well back with 3627p. Russian Marina Goncharova is seventh with 3561p and Aiga Grabuste of Latvia eighth having scored only 3241p in the competition.

Gaps in the 800m to Jessica Ennis and others:
Natalia Dobrynska 3.65 seconds to Ennis
Hyleas Fountain 0.7 seconds to Dobrynska
Tatyana Chernova 7.3 seconds to Fountain and 8.0 seconds to Dobrynska

Mirko Jalava for the IAAF


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