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Ennis plays down Kluft comparisons

Jessica Ennis was always ahead of her rivals at the World Indoor Championships in Doha © Getty Images

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Jessica Ennis has moved to play down comparisons between herself and Swedish legend Carolina Kluft.

Ennis added World Indoor pentathlon gold to her World Championship gold in the heptathlon last summer, breaking Kluft's indoor record in the process. The Sheffield athlete appears peerless at the moment in the combined events but the 24-year-old has no intention of resting on her laurels.

Kluft won three World Championship golds and emerged victorious at the Athens Olympics, before turning her attentions to the long jump. She is the benchmark for heptathletes and Ennis is aware of the improvements she has to make.

"It is nice even to be mentioned in the same sentence as Carolina Kluft, the Swedish legend, but those comparisons are definitely premature," Ennis wrote in the Times. "I may have broken her World Indoor Championships record on Saturday, but the important thing is she scored over 7,000 points in the Heptathlon and that is quite a long way off for me.

"I hope to keep making improvements and get close to that milestone one day, but for the moment Carolina remains an inspiration. Obviously, she decided to focus on the long jump at the last Olympics and I have mixed feelings about the prospect of her possibly returning to the heptathlon.

"On one hand it would be nice to compete against her now and see how I shape up, but on the other hand I'd prefer that to be in a few years when I've had more time to train, and it is nice to be in the position I am now.

"I first came up against her at the 2006 European Cup. She was already the Olympic champion by then and well on the way to going unbeaten for 22 competitions. She had a huge presence. She was incredibly driven and you couldn't help but notice her. The thing I remember from meeting her for the first time, though, was she was so incredibly down to earth and, despite achieving so much, made you feel comfortable around her.

"She's a massive inspiration, not only what she achieved and the way she dominated the event for so long, but the way she did it. She does not have a trace of arrogance about her and so I have a lot of respect for her."

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