Kenney continues to shine as Kelly scoop's victory despite injury scare

LAURA KENNEY has vowed to continue her rise to athletics stardom after another impressive outing at the Crystal Palace Grand Prix.

The 23-year-old - who stormed to European under-23 5,000m glory last year - set her second personal best in the space of a month on the road to third in the 3,000m.

Kenney clocked 8:57.39 minutes to add to her new 5,000m best of 15:26.96m which she broke by over 20 seconds last month in Spain.

The Royal Sutton Coldfield AC star was just four seconds behind American winner Jennifer Rhines and admitted she is in the form of her life.

"I was really surprised that I got a personal best - the first lap was so slow that I thought I would never get a good time," she said.

"My last two races have been 5k's and I have been trying to get some good times. That has given me that extra bit of strength to pull through at the end and I am delighted to finish third.

"The 5k has been my main focus and I smashed a new personal best by about 30 seconds and after that anything was a bonus.

"I just want to keep doing what I am doing - breaking the nine minute barrier was a great achievement and I am racing really well at the moment."

Elsewhere, Birchfield Harrier Kelly Sotherton ignored doctor's orders to win the women's four event challenge with ease - despite a farcical start to her campaign.

The 31-year-old pulled her abductor muscle following a mix up during the 100m hurdles which saw the third set of barriers placed in the wrong position.

However the Beijing heptathlon gold medal hope - who recorded a new personal best of 6.79m in the long jump - put that behind her to claim glory with 3,964 points ahead of American Gi-Gi Johnson and Laurien Hoos of Holland.

"The hurdles were really frustrating and I could have picked up a really serious injury," she said. "But I wanted to run - it was great to win and I am up and on course for Beijing."

Fellow Birchfield star Tom Parsons was brought back down to earth after finishing sixth in the high jump.

The 24-year-old was on cloud nine heading into the meet after setting a new personal best of 2.30m at the UK Trials but he could not repeat the trick with a best jump of 2.25m as Russia's Andrey Silnov hogged the headlines with a jump 13 centimetres better than Parsons'.

RYAN BANGS