Stomach upset casts doubt on Lewis crusade

Denise Lewis, Britain's Olympic heptathlon champion, has only an even chance of competing at the World Championships which start here today, her coach, Charles van Commenee, said yesterday.

Lewis, who won silver at the last World Championships, was said to be suffering from a stomach upset. "It is hard to say what is going to happen,'' Van Commenee said less than 48 hours before the heptathlon was due to start. "It's 50-50. We will probably make a decision on Saturday morning. To be realistic she has to feel good enough to be in contention for the gold medal.''

Van Commenee explained that Lewis had had stomach problems for years, adding: "Some days it's worse than others. It was best for her to stay in bed today. She is an experienced athlete but she is very human like you and me." Her last competitive outing, at the world trials in Birmingham, underlined the fact that she was having continuing difficulties with her high jump, a state of affairs which, according to her coach, had not greatly improved in the intervening weeks.

"We all know that she wasn't great at the trials, Van Commenee said. "She was strong in six events but weak in the high jump. The problem goes back to 1999 when she had an injury to her left leg since when she hasn't been able to jump enough.'' Lewis, nevertheless, has undergone between 15 and 20 training sessions since Birmingham.

"She is a much better athlete than she was three weeks ago,'' Van Commenee added. Lewis, whose season started late, has known for months that she faces a tough challenge to beat the Frenchwoman Eunice Barber, who won the title in Seville two years ago and has recorded this year's best heptathlon score.

The Briton has shown on numerous occasions in the last seven years that she has a champion's ability to pull her performance together when it matters, something she did to earn bronze in the 1996 Olympics and again last year to take the Olympic title, despite competing with numerous long-term injuries. By the time she finished in Sydney, she had so many bandages upon her person that she looked like a training model at a St John Ambulance evening. She has competed at less than 100 per cent fitness for the last three years, during which time she has won European and Olympic titles as well as world silver.

Her form this season has run to a similar pattern, and has not been helped by the fact that her coach has been able to spend less time with her after taking up a position as national coach for jumping events within UK Athletics. As a consequence, Lewis has had to shift her training base from Amsterdam, where she had access to top-class facilities, to London, where she has struggled to find suitable venues. Earlier this year, she complained of Britain's "third-world facilities.''

What has added to the pressure this year is the knowledge that Barber, who had to drop out midway through the Olympic final, has been back in outstanding form. Earlier this year in Austria, the French athlete set a mark of 6,736 points, and Lewis's morale would not have been helped by the buoyant noises from Barber's press conference yesterday. She said she had recovered from the nerve problem in her back that had prevented her from competing since Austria, and added that she had two main targets in Edmonton: to win gold, and score over 7,000 pts.

Britain's Olympic champion, Jonathan Edwards, appears to be on firmer ground after a season in which he has recorded eight successive triple jump victories and set the leading 2001 mark of 17.66 metres. If Edwards, who set the world record of 18.29m in securing the 1995 world title in Gothenburg, is Britain's only clear favourite, there are a healthy number of other prospects who could reach golden heights.

Steve Backley enters this competition knowing that there are three others who have thrown the javelin further than him this season, but the timing of his big effort of 90.81m in the Crystal Palace Grand Prix last Sunday week has sent him into action with rising hopes of earning his first global title, even if the trio above him does include the Olympic champion, Jan Zelezny.

Paula Radcliffe, the world half-marathon champion and world cross-country champion, will seek her first global track title over 10,000 metres with a background of solid achievement, having broken her British 3,000m record and missed breaking her 5,000m record by just 0.65sec. But in Gete Wami and Deratu Tulu she faces two Ethiopians who have relegated her to the silver medal in, respectively, the 1999 world 10,000m final and the 1997 World Cross-Country Championship.

Radcliffe may go on to contest the 5,000m, where she would face the Olympic champion Gabriela Szabo but ­ almost certainly ­ not the Russian Olga Yegorova, who has beaten her twice this season but is expected to be banned after testing positive for the banned bloodbooster, EPO.

Kelly Holmes, the Olympic 800m bronze medallist, faces the pair who finished ahead of her in Sydney, Maria Mutola of Mozambique and Steffi Graf of Austria, plus the Brazilian newcomer Fabiane dos Santos.

The absence of Michael Johnson makes the 400m intriguing. Tyree Washington, the fastest this year with 44.28, failed to qualify, and the British pair of Mark Richardson, who had a drug suspension lifted last month, and Iwan Thomas, allowed in after earning the qualifying time the day after the deadline, could profit.