Ennis excited by Glasgow challenge

JESSICA Ennis, focusing on adding the world indoor pentathlon title to the global outdoor heptathlon gold medal she lifted last summer, is relishing the quality of opposition she will face in today's Aviva International Match in Glasgow.

Ennis was originally chosen to compete for the Great Britain team in just the high jump against former world outdoor silver medallist Chaunte Howard of the United States. But when coach Toni Minichiello saw the high quality line-up also in the 60 metres hurdles he asked if she could also take part as a guest runner and got the green light.

"It's a nice opportunity to come to an event like this," said Ennis, who apart from the hurdles has already achieved personal indoor bests in the 60m, long jump and shot put this year. "Obviously I'm used to expecting a certain standard from other heptathletes, so to come into a specialist environment and compete in the hurdles and the high jump, will be really good."

The Sheffield star, who will captain the host nation side just two days after celebrating her 24th birthday, is looking forward in particular to tackling the reigning world indoor 60m hurdles champion Lolo Jones who is skippering Team USA. She is highly confident their head-to-head on the fast Kelvin Hall track will see her make further inroads into her personal best of 8.12 seconds which she achieved last month at Loughborough.

Ennis said: "I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to race against some of the top hurdlers – obviously Lolo Jones – and try and push myself and see if I can squeeze out a PB or get close to my hurdles personal best. They're going to be running very quick and hopefully they can bring out the best in me in the hurdles and pull me along in that event."

Ennis is also determined to produce a good display in the high jump where a fortnight ago she easily cleared an excellent height of 1.89m before raising the bar to 1.96m, which if successful would have erased Debbie Marti's UK record.

"I'd love to do that," she added of again challenging Marti's record. "That was my first competition of the indoor season and I was really happy to jump what I did. And it was a good opportunity to put it (the bar] up to that height and feel it and try and get the timing right. It's good to practice that and get a little bit closer to it next time."

Ennis, who is gearing up nicely for the world indoors in Doha from 12-14 March, is optimistic of winning another gold medal. "From the way the season's started I feel really confident. I feel in good shape and I feel I'm ready to compete well for the indoor season," added Ennis, who before Doha will compete at the trials in Sheffield on 13-14 February and the Aviva Grand Prix the following Saturday in Birmingham.

Olympic 100m hurdles finalist Sarah Claxton, the country's second-fastest ever 60m hurdler with a time of 7.96sec, is the official British entry and will be hoping to show she is back at her best after injury ruined her season last summer. Lisa Dobriskey and Jenny Meadows, who grabbed the world 1500m and 800m silver and bronze medals in Berlin last August, are also included in the side for the match against Germany, Sweden, the United States and a Commonwealth Select.

Craig Pickering the former European 60m silver medallist will also be determined to collect maximum points and win his sprint race for the fourth successive year.