Personal best secures Ennis win

Ennis return 'better than expected'

Heptathlete Jessica Ennis delivered the best performance of her career to secure heptathlon victory at the IAAF Combined Events Challenge in Desenzano.

The Briton, 23, scored a personal best of 6587 points to win easily ahead of Ukraine's Hanna Melnchenko with 6077.

Ennis is now third on the UK all-time points list behind 2000 Olympic champion Denise Lewis and Judy Simpson.

And she recorded the UK 'A' qualifying standard to secure a place at August's World Championships in Berlin.

Ennis has missed the last 12 months after incurring a stress fracture in her right foot in Gotzis last May.

"It was a nice surprise to be back into it after a long time out," said Commonwealth bronze medallist Ennis, who won the Italian title two years ago. "I was a bit nervous beforehand."

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Ennis led the event from start to finish after producing a career-best score of 4003 points in the opening day's four-event session, which included 12.98 seconds in the 100m hurdles, 1.90 metres in the high jump, a shot put effort of 13.19m and an unopposed win over 200m in 23.49sec.

On Sunday, she produced a long jump effort of 6.16m, threw a solid 42.70m in the javelin and clocked a thrilling personal best time of 2:09.88 for the 800m to ease past the world qualifier points requirement of 6100.

"I am very pleased with my 12.98 in the hurdles," she said. "I expected to throw further in the shot put which was a bit disappointing after my recent improvement to 13.59m last week."

Significantly, Ennis is now ahead of Kelly Sotherton, the Athens Olympics bronze medallist and current British number one, by 40 points in the all-time list.