Ennis shakes off injury in time to hit gold trail in Doha

With it would come justification of the Sheffield multi-eventer's decision to forego the Commonwealth Games this year due to scheduling problems, was the correct call.

The 24-year-old darling of British athletics has shaken off a niggling foot injury that hampered her preparations and is among the favourites to win gold in the pentathlon at the World Indoor Championships, which start today in Doha.

It is Ennis's first major championship since she won the world heptathlon gold in August last year, with the second big date on her 2010 calendar being the European Championships in Barcelona at the end of July.

The scheduling of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October, less than two months after the conclusion of the Europeans, meant something had to give for a woman whose six-day a week training regime is already geared towards the London 2012 Olympics.

"You can't do everything, you have to select what's best for you and with the Europeans essentially being like a world championship, that is important for me, as is having a really good indoor season this year and next year," said Ennis, whose first major medal came with a bronze at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

"The Commonwealths are a fantastic games and a fantastic experience and I wouldn't want to talk anyone out of competing in them, but for me it just can't be done this year.

"Having done a full indoor season, then to peak for the European and then have to peak again for another major championship a few months later, would be too much.

"It just doesn't fit with my programme at all."

So the focus on Doha intensifies for Ennis, whose sublime domination of the heptathlon in Berlin marks her out as the woman to beat this weekend.

A stellar cast including Olympic champion Nataliya Dobrynska, silver medallist Hyleas Fountain and bronze medallist Tatyana Chernova are all in action in a gruelling pentathlon which fits a five-event schedule into eight hours.

"There'll be a few heptathletes at the world indoors that weren't at Berlin like Fountain," said Ennis whose best pentathlon score is 4,716, set in 2007.

"Realistically I hope to make an improvement and score a personal best and if that gets close to the world record that would be absolutely fantastic.

"I'll concentrate on each event at a time and see where that gets me. Obviously a pentathlon indoors is a very tough event with no time to recover.

"So it's going to be tough, but I've done it before and we've got a plan in place and we know how we're going to take it to produce some good performances on the day."

After setting a clutch of personal bests in the first indoor meet of the season in Glasgow, a ligament strain in her right foot ended Ennis's chances of competing in front of a sell-out home crowd at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield in February and later that month at the British Championships.

She only lost a week-and-a-half of high-intensity training and rates her fitness going into Doha at 90 per cent.