Women's Long Jump - PREVIEW

Reigning World indoor and outdoor Brittney Reese, a relative latecomer to world class athletics having concentrated mainly on basketball in her early college days in Missisippi, has confirmed with some dominant displays that she's the long jumper to beat in the last two years.

Now Reese will be bidding to achieve the first back-to-back retention of the title since fellow American Jackie Joyner-Kersee achieved the feat at a time when the competition was held on a four year cycle. In 1987 and 1991 the long reigning World Heptathlon record holder scored victories with a Championship record of 7.36m in Rome and then 7.32m in Tokyo.

Reese, who will compete in Daegu just before her 25th birthday on 9 September after being confined to the indoor ball game during 2005 and the following year, revealed her ability for long jumping when making Team USA for the Osaka 2007 World Championships followed by the Beijing Olympics.

At the Far East venues she finished in eighth and fifth positions before the transformation came to her career two years ago. With the best performance of her life she defeated Tatyana Lebedeva, Russia's multi-medalled Olympic and World title holder in Berlin.

Reese, trailing the legendary long and triple jump specialist by five centimeters, improved her 2009 World lead from 7.06m to another lifetime best of 7.10m. It was the biggest leap at the Championships since Heike Drechlser won on home soil in Stuttgart 16 years earlier with 7.11m.    

Improving year-on-year she is gradually edging towards truly super world class distances and suggesting these may be on the horizon in the near future, unleashed an exceptional leap of 7.19m to win a fourth straight USA Championship title at the World Trials in Eugene on 26 June.

Now last year's World Indoor champion and Samsung Diamond League overall champion who is also enjoying a comfortable cushion in the current series is a clear leader by 14 centimetres in the 2011 world lists.

Behind her is the 20-year-old Russian Darya Klishina who took last month's European U23 title with a personal best 7.05m and since then has achieved three podium finishes on the SDL circuit in Lausanne, Birmingham and Monaco.

Reese, although respectful of this year's European Indoor champion's and Moscow model's emerging potential, will probably expect a bigger challenge to come from fellow teammates Funmi Jimoh and Janay DeLoach who are chasing her in her SDL series and have season's bests of 6.88m and 6.97m.

The 2008 Olympic champion Maurren Higa Maggi who cleared her best of the summer on home Brazilian soil of 6.89m in Sao Paulo albeit in mid-May and owns a lifetime furthest of 7.26m can be expected to mount a strong challenge along with Olga Zaytseva who took the Russian title with 7.01m on 22 July and is third on the world list.

Ineta Radevica winner of last summer's European title on countback ahead of Portugese multi-eventer Naide Gomez with a leap of 6.92m, despite a low key season to date, has been confirmed in the Latvian team.

David Martin for the IAAF