Dwain Chambers claimed his first global sprint title and Jessica Ennis posted the fourth-best pentathlon score of all-time on a golden day for Britain at the World Indoor Championships on Saturday.
Chambers, banned for doping for two years in 2003, won the 60m competition with the year’s fastest sprint time, an impressive 6.48 seconds.
Mike Rodgers of the US took second in 6.53 seconds, with Antigua’s Daniel Bailey third in 6.57 seconds.
“I will enjoy this moment for a while and will work hard,” said Chambers, who hopes to win the European 100m title this summer. “I’m so grateful to be here.”
World heptathlon champion Ennis won the pentathlon with 4,937 points.
Only world record holder Irina Belova of Russia and Sweden’s Carolina Kluft have posted better scores than the 24-year-old Briton. She topped Kluft’s championship record by four points.
“I know the world record is within reach,” said Ennis, who had victories in the 60m hurdles and high jump, a season’s best in the shot put and personal bests in the long jump and the concluding 800m.
Olympic heptathlon gold medallist Nataliya Dobrynska of Ukraine was second with 4,851 points and Russia’s Tatyana Chernova third with 4,762 points.
Australian Olympic and world pole vault champion Steve Hooker collected the only global title he was missing, the indoor title, with a championship record 6.01m. He then took three unsuccessful tries at adding 1cm to Sergei Bubka’s world record of 6.15m.
Ethiopian Meseret Defar also added more gold, claiming her fourth successive women’s 3,000m title. She sprinted home in 8 minutes, 51.17 seconds to edge out Kenyan 5,000m world champion Vivian Cheruiyot.
Another defending champion, Croatian Blanka Vlasic, won her second successful high jump title with a clearance of 2m.
A powerful US team claimed four golds on the second day of the three-day meeting.
Defending champion Lolo Jones was perhaps the happiest, celebrating wildly after winning the women’s 60m hurdles in a championship record 7.72 seconds. The US went 1-2 in the heptathlon, with shot put defender Christian Cantwell and women’s 400m runner Debbie Dunn also winning.
Olympic decathlon gold medallist Bryan Clay scored 6,204 points to edge world champion Trey Hardee, who had 6,184.
Cantwell took the shot put with a last-throw toss of 21.83m to overtake Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus.
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