Denise Lewis put a silver shine on a world championships that are threatening to turn sour for Britain in the Olympic Stadium here last night. The 25-year-old from Wolverhampton finished second in the heptathlon behind Sabine Braun of Germany to win Britain's first medal of the week.
But around Lewis, some of the team's biggest hopes were brought crashing down. The silver medal represented another step forward for Lewis, winner of the bronze in the Atlanta Olympics. If there was any sense of disappointment is was only because expectations of a gold medal had been raised so high by her performance earlier this year, when she set a UK record of 6736 points in Gotzis.
The rankings always predicted a shoot-out between Lewis and Braun, who on the same June weekend the Briton produced her performance in Austria, trumped her by scoring 6787 in her national championships. But Lewis left herself with a hill to climb as high as those which overlook this stadium from the very first event when she clobbered a barrier in the 100 metres hurdles and lost valuable points.
She retrieved some ground in the long jump, the first event of the second day, with an effort of 6.47 metres. But that was a long way behind her best and Braun avoided the nightmare that cost her Olympic gold last year. In Atlanta she jumped only 6.21m in the long jump which saw her drop from third overnight then to seventh where she eventually finished.
But yesterday morning Braun cleared a respectable 6.42 and both she and Lewis knew the contest was effectively over. That's how it turned out with Braun scoring 6739, Lewis 6654. It was the best performance by a British female multi-eventer since Mary Peters won the Olympic title in Munich a quarter-of-a-century ago. "If she had not hit that hurdle she might have been celebrating gold," said Peters, here in her capacity as president of the British Athletic Federation.
Lewis was nevertheless pleased. "I'm delighted with silver," she said. "You have to savour these moments because if you don't you never know when the moment may come along again."
Ashia Hansen, the best qualifier for the final of the triple jump, was expected to join Lewis on the medal podium. But it was not to be. She never came close to performing like she had in Sheffield when she jumped 14.94m, the 17th British record of her career, and finished a highly disappointing fifth. Even if she had only recaptured her qualifying form and jumped 14.77m it would have earned her the bronze medal in a competition won by Sarka Kasparkova of the Czech Republic with a leap of 15.20m.
But the Shaftesbury athlete was handicapped by a bad back which restricted her ability to sprint properly - a major problem in an event which is all about explosive power.
