ENNIS THE MENACE; THREE BRITISH GOLD MEDAL HOPES WITH THE WHOLE COUNTRY BEHIND THEM IN BERLIN.

Byline: ALEX SPINK

JUST before 'Lightning' strikes Berlin on Sunday all of British athletics will be holding its breath.

Jessica Ennis will leave the warmup area where Usain Bolt is finalising his preparations for the show-stopping 100m final at the World Athletics Championships.

She will line up for the 800m, the last of seven events which comprise the heptathlon. The expectation in the British team is that the 23-year-old will become the nation's fourth world champion since the turn of the millennium - following Jonathan Edwards, Paula Radcliffe and Christine Ohuruogu.

But it is a feeling accompanied by crossed fingers as a rash of injuries to medal prospects has left this British team in danger of entering the record books for the wrong reason.

Head coach Charles van Commenee has demanded his charges match the five medals the team won at the last World Championships in Osaka two years ago. But without Tasha Danvers, Kelly Sotherton, Mara Yamauchi and Germaine Mason - and with major doubts still surrounding the fitness of Ohuruogu and Radcliffe - they could struggle to beat their worst haul of three in Helsinki in 2005.

So the pressure is on Ennis, the Sheffield star who missed last year's Beijing Olympics with a broken ankle. "It's obviously going to build, the closer we get to competition," Ennis said.

"But the pressure comes with doing well. So I'm just appreciating where I am."

Where she is now is ranked one in the world, courtesy of a spectacular return from injury back in May when she scored a personal best 6,587 points.

As recently as a fortnight ago she threw a lifetime best in the shot in a low-key meet at Loughborough, before setting a personal best in the long jump.

"If someone had said to me last year when I was injured that I was going to be in this position now, I would have grabbed it with both hands," she said.

Katharine Merry, the former World 400m No.1 turned mentor to Britain's top young athletes, insists Ennis is 'the real deal'.

Merry said: "She knows there's pressure, she knows there's expectation and she thrives off it. She is mentally very tough. Missing Beijing, in my opinion, has given her an extra 10 per cent on her performance."

Merry says Ennis is cut from the same cloth as the British women who have won medals in the past three Olympic Games.

"It goes without saying that she is very hungry," said the Sydney 2000 bronze medallist.

"But like Christine, Tasha, Denise Lewis, Kelly Holmes and myself, she is a ballsy character. 'Tell me what you want me to do in training, coach, and I'll do that and some'. That sort of attitude. Around British athletics I don't see enough of that but Jess has it in abundance."

There is no better example of her drive and determination than her decision this year to change to jumping off her left foot rather the right, which she broke in Austria.

Armed with that sort of attitude she can go far, certainly better than her fourth place in Osaka, and not just because none of the three medal winners from two years ago are in Berlin.

CAPTION(S):

TWO-DAY STRETCH Jessica Ennis will be looking for a good start in the hurdles FLYING THE FLAGEnnis is one of GB's best hopes for a medal