London 2012: Ennis on top after two events

Friday, August 3, 2012
3:01 PM

Olympic heptathlon: GB hope takes early lead

Britain’s Jessica Ennis today claimed a 25-point lead after two events of the heptathlon thanks to a truly sensational performance in front of a massive crowd in the Olympic Stadium.

And Liverpool teenager Katarina Johnson-Thompson, already tipped by Ennis to surpass her achievements, found herself in third place thanks to equalling her personal best in the 100m hurdles and setting a new PB of 1.89m in the high jump.

Only a handful of seats in the 80,000-capacity stadium were empty when Ennis broke the British record and smashed her personal best with an exhilarating run of 12.54 seconds in the hurdles, a time which gave American Dawn Harper Olympic gold in the individual event in Beijing.

The 26-year-old took 0.25secs off her PB and 0.02s off the previous national record set by hurdles specialist Tiffany Porter, while it was also the fastest ever hurdles time recorded in a heptathlon.

That gave Ennis an 11-point lead over Canada’s Jessica Zelinka - whose own time of 12.65s was an impressive PB - which became a total of 2,249 and 25-point lead over American Hyleas Fountain after the high jump.

Ennis cleared 1.86m and was agonisingly close to also getting over 1.89m, a height which was cleared by team-mate Johnson-Thompson for a new personal best to leave the 19-year-old - who ran 13.48 in the hurdles - third, 103 points behind Ennis.

Reigning Olympic champion Nataliya Dobrynska was 193 points behind Ennis in 12th, with world champion Tatyana Chernova 218 points off the pace in 16th. Britain’s Louise Hazel was down in 37th after clearing just 1.59m in the high jump.