Ennis takes stock for London Olympics

Jessica Ennis was left licking her wounds after handing Tatyana Chernova her world heptathlon crown, but insisted she would not dwell on her silver medal showing ahead of the London Olympics.

Ennis, the Sheffield-born athlete chosen by Games organisers as the ‘face’ of the 2012 Olympics, failed to click in her weakest event, the javelin, throwing more than seven metres off her personal best and crucially 13m off Chernova.

The Russian immediately leapfrogged Ennis in the standings into first place going into the seventh and final event, the 800m, on Tuesday.

And the former world junior champion who won bronze at the Beijing Olympics, made no mistake, claiming gold after amassing 6,880 points to Ennis’s 6,751.

“I don’t want to walk away from it and analyse it too much,” said Ennis.

“It’s not something I’m going to dwell on and mull over. I think it was just one of those days where it just didn’t come together. It was a brilliant score by Chernova, she performed really well.”

Ennis said despite her defeat she was satisfied with her showing in South Korea, in which she notched some personal bests and would get to work on her javelin.

“I’ve got to make sure I improve the areas I need to improve and make sure it’s a gold next year,” said the 25-year-old, who only managed a poor best of 39.95m in the javelin compared with Chernova’s throw of 52.95m.

“It was always going to be tough this year. It’s going to be even tougher next year, but I’m just going to make sure I’m stronger and better next year to make sure I get that gold medal,” said the Briton.

“Obviously Tatyana had a brilliant javelin and that was enough to build that gap and take the gold medal.”

Toni Minichiello, Ennis’s coach of 14 years, insisted there were valuable lessons to be learned for his charge who led by 118 points after five events by equalling her personal best in the long jump but ended 129 points down on Chernova.

“There have been some good positives to come out,” Mini-chiello said.

“In reality she beat Chernova in five events, but just got heavily beaten in the javelin. That’s the difference.”

“When you’re world number one you’d hope that you would retain that kind of performance at championships like this, but it is still a good learning opportunity.”