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The world athletics championships

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athleticstrackIn Moscow, Britain’s women shone throughout the week.

Britain’s track and field athletes achieved their target of six medals at last week’s world championships in Moscow, but only just.

As the final evening of competition began, the British total stood at five. Britain’s women finished fourth in the 4x100m relay, agonisingly overtaken on the final straight by France.

There were fleeting celebrations when the men’s sprint relay team finished third in the final race of the championships, stopped short when they were stripped of the bronze medal due to a faulty changeover.

Resigned to having fallen short of the target set by UK Athletics, the athletes had already returned to their hotels when a last-minute piece of luck came their way. France had been disqualified from the women’s sprint relay for their own faulty changeover: Britain moved up to third place, and the sixth medal was theirs.

It was an exciting end to a week that had shown plenty of promise.

Christine Ohuruogu stepped up early on to take on the role of poster girl, left absent by an injured Jess Ennis-Hill.

Ohuruogu’s 400m win on August 13 set the tone for the British team’s championships: she was behind for much of the race, and almost seemed defeated, before pulling off one of her signature late surges to win back her world title by four thousandths of a second.

“You’re not supposed to give up, you’re supposed to fight with everything you’ve got,” she said. “For me, a race isn’t won until it’s finished.”

This fighting spirit has made Ohuruogu the most successful British woman athlete in history – no other Brit has ever regained a lost world title – and the darling “golden girl” of the media.

Ohuruogu also contributed to another of Britain’s medals, running a storming final leg in the 4x400m relay to secure a bronze.

Her promise to continue racing until Rio 2016, when she will be 32, has raised hopes of another performance to match her gold in Beijing five years ago.

Another medal was won by Tiffany Porter, whose bronze in the 100m hurdles was Britain’s first ever world championship medal in that event.

She set a personal best in a very strong field, finishing behind Brianna Rollins, who holds the third fastest time in history, and Olympic champion Sally Pearson.

The younger members of the team have also provided reason for hope.

With Ennis-Hill injured, we had to make do without the heptathlon gold to which we are becoming accustomed, but British number two Katarina Johnson-Thompson rose to the occasion in quite some style.

The 20 year-old set four personal bests to bring herself into unexpectedly into contention for a bronze. Hopes were high, but in the event, second place in the 800m was not quite enough to secure the medal.

But it was a close call – her final score of 6,440 was just 28 points adrift of the bronze medallist. Johnson-Thompson has proved that she is here to stay, something that has not gone unnoticed by Ennis-Hill’s coach Toni Minichiello.

“She is better than Jess pound-for-pound,” Minichiello told the BBC. “If you look at what Jess did at her age as a junior, Kat’s performed better than that every single time. If she keeps going she’ll probably be better.”

Perri Shakes-Drayton could only manage seventh in the 400m hurdles final after hitting two hurdles, but this performance is hardly indicative of her potential or form.

Sheakes-Drayton had achieved the second fastest qualifying time in the semi-finals, and is still ranked second in the world.

She was joined in the final by Eilidh Child, who took fifth place.

To have two women in a world championship final illustrates the developing depth of talent in British athletics.

There was also promise on show from Hannah England, who came fourth in the 1500m, and from a strong group of 800m runners: Marilyn Okoro and Laura Muir reached the semi-finals with a season’s best and lifetime best respectively.

Jess Judd, who started the season in brilliant fashion, was unable to advance beyond the heats, but at just 18, she has plenty of time to progress. She was in tears as she crossed the finishing line, but was proud of her season and confident of her future.

“I expected so much more than that,” she said. “I’ve come a long way this season. It’s been my best year so far and it would have been a dream if I could have made it into the final, or at least a semi-final.

“I know I could be a finalist, I can run so much quicker.”

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