Athletics: Mo Farah breaks European two-mile record but it’s not enough for top spot

IT IS a measure of the immense expectations which now rest on Mo Farah’s shoulders that a sigh of disappointment resonated around the National Indoor Arena yesterday despite another landmark in the Londoner’s career. Competing over two miles at the Aviva Grand Prix, he established a new European record of 8:08.07 at the distance but it was not sufficient for victory.

After the race, Farah said: “It’s tough out there you know, you can’t always win and races like that really keep you on your toes. I felt a bit flat on the last kilometre because I’d been up with the pace early on.”

While Farah prevaricates over whether to compete at next month’s world indoor championships in Istanbul, Jessica Ennis is making all the right moves as she prepares to defend her pentathlon title. She moved into first place in the global 60 metres hurdles rankings with a run of 7.87 seconds, leaving world silver medallist Danielle Carruthers in her wake.

“To run 7.94 or something like that I would have been really happy with, but to run that much under my PB is just brilliant,” she said.

She was not done yet. Ennis then delivered her best-ever indoor long jump of 6.47m but her efforts were dwarfed by Shara Proctor. Like Ennis, a genuine hope for Olympic gold, she captured the British indoor record with a leap of 6.71m and then duly extended it by nine centimetres more with her final attempt.

“In my mind I had 6.71m because I had a dream,” said the Anguilla-born Proctor.

“So I came out aiming at that. Then, after I jumped that, I said: ‘Shara you can go further’ so I did and I jumped 6.80m.”

Rising Scottish prospect Guy Learmonth booked his spot in the British squad for Istanbul after producing the quickest 800 metres of his young career. The 19-year-old from Midlothian, who finished second in last week’s trials, landed the qualifying time with a run of 1:47.84 as he latched on to the searing pace set by Ethiopia’s Mohamed Aman.

However, Kilbarchan’s Claire Gibson came up just short in her attempt to join him in the GB team despite setting a new 1500m best.

Commonwealth medallist Chris Baillie, who competes at today’s Scottish Championships at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall, ran his fastest hurdles for three years but crashed out in the heats in an event won by 2004 Olympic champion Liu Xiang of China.