Golden girl Ennis crowned Olympic heptathlon champion as Britain celebrates super Saturday
Jessica Ennis tonight lived up to her billing as Britain’s golden girlwith a commanding victory in the Olympic heptathlon at London 2012.
Four years after reluctantly watching the Beijing Games on TV following a career-threatening foot injury, Ennis made light of the weight of expectation on her shoulders to leave her rivals battling for silver and bronze.
Three personal bests in the previous six events meant Ennis went into the final discipline, the 800m, with a commanding 188-point lead that equated to a 13-second advantage over Lithuania’s Austra Skujyte.
A run of two minutes 5.69seconds would have seen her become only the fourth woman in history to score 7,000 points, and even though there was no need for such heroics, the 26-year-old from Sheffield blasted through the opening lap on her way to victory in 2:08.65.
She was cheered on by a frenzied crowd at the Olympic Stadium which erupted as she crossed the line.
That time was outside her personal best but still enough for a new overall PB of 6,955 points to improve on the national record of 6,906 she set earlier this year.
Russia’s Tatyana Chernova, who took Ennis’s world title last year, claimed silver a distant 327 points behind, with Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Yosypenko taking bronze a further 10 points back.
London 2012 Olympics:Mo Farah wins! He is the new 10,000 Olympic champion!
Still they crowd together. Farah opens his legs with 500m to go and I can barely hear myself think. Everyone is standing as Farah leads it out with 300m to go, but he can’t lose them yet. He’s sprinting but they are still chasing. He goes again. He’s leading with 100m to go. He’s going to do it! He wins in 27.30.42 sec! Farah is the Olympic 10,000m champion and everyone around me is screaming and shouting and is off their feet. Except Farah, who rolls on the track before being picked up by Galen Rupp of the US who finished second in 27.30.90. Tariku Bekele finished third in 27.21.43, a hundredth of a second ahead of his more famous brother Kenenisa in fourth.
London 2012 Olympics: Gold at last for Greg Rutherford in long jump
He recently remodelled his action on Olympic legend and four-time long jump champion Carl Lewis and some of the stardust clearly rubbed off as Greg Rutherford on Saturday night became the first man since Lynn ‘The Leap’ Davies back in 1964 to win the title for Great Britain
Gerg Rutherford produced one of the biggest jumps of his life to win a long jump gold medal.
Rutherford leaped to 8.31m to claim the win at his home Olympics as fellow Brit Chris Tomlinson finished outside the medals in sixth place.
