Jessica Ennis-Hill seals second world heptathlon title

Jessica Ennis-Hill and Katarina Johnson-Thompson are set to battle it out for World Championship glory after an impressive opening day from the British heptathletes in Beijing.

Jessica Ennis-Hill completed a remarkable comeback in her first major tournament for three years by winning a second World Championships heptathlon gold medal in Beijing on Sunday. Canada’s Brianne Theisen-Eaton did not come to China for silver and left recalibrating the challenge facing her in Brazil.

Ennis-Hill won the competition with a season-best 6,669 points, leading from the second through the seventh events.

Ennis-Hill is all too aware of that but warned she did not go “eyeballs out” in the Bird’s Nest and sees plenty of improvements across the seven disciplines.

But the American’s agent Renaldo Nehemiah told the Guardian: “Justin, as well as I, feel that the British media and journalists have been extremely unkind to him”.

The experienced duo of Olympic champion Kirani James (44.56 seconds) of Grenada and US world champion LaShawn Merritt (44.51) barely strained as they safely negotiated the men’s 400m heats. If I’d come away with a bronze I’d have been so happy, so to win gold is unbelievable. To have won the gold is better still. I had to give it my all.

Having been in contention for gold overnight, Johnson-Thompson finished 28th and last with 5,039 points having been compelled by the rulebook to jog around her 800m in order to be allowed to compete again this week in the individual long jump.

Despite two fouls to start, Johnson-Thompson went all out on her last attempt and appeared to step over the line by a tiny margin on a huge jump.

“I would like to think I’ve got the goods as well so the 800m could be really special”.

When asked about the difficulties of balancing life as a mother and training as an athlete, Ennis-Hill added to the BBC: “This has definitely been the hardest year ever, going into London (2012) was incredibly hard but there were different pressures”.

“It was the first time I had come into a championship as favourite”, she reflected.

And that was what summoned the emotion as the Sheffield star slumped to the track following the 800m, surrounded by her fellow competitors and then eventually draped in the flag, holding it aloft to create a scene which stirred memories of that glorious Saturday in the capital three years ago.

“It’s hard at the beginning when you’ve got a newborn and you’re adjusting to everything, then getting back into training”, she said.

She is the Olympic champion who stormed to the top of world athletics at London 2012. This time previous year I’d just had my son and now I’m here competing. “This time previous year I’d just had my son and it’s an incredible feeling”.