World Athletics 2011: Phillips Idowu makes triple jump final

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Media caption,

Bolt back and Idowu impresses

Phillips Idowu began his bid to become the first Briton to defend a world title by qualifying for the triple jump final with a single leap in Daegu.

Idowu cruised into Sunday's final with an opening effort of 17.17m, which turned out to be the fourth best effort of Friday morning's qualifying round.

Christine Ohuruogu ran a strong first leg as GB qualified easily for Sunday's women's 4x400m relay final.

The Olympic champion was disqualified from the 400m heats, external on Saturday.

She told BBC Radio 5 live: "If you've got a chance to run you have to really make sure you go for it.

"I wasn't really thinking about false-starting - if you think about it, you do it. I'm doing it for the team so I have to do as well as I can."

After strong middle legs from Nicola Sanders and Lee McConnell, Perri Shakes-Drayton took the team home in third in a time of three minutes 23.05 seconds, with Russia winning the heat.

Shakes-Drayton, who had missed out on the final of her individual event, the 400m hurdles, said: "I was gutted not to make my final but now I'm getting over it, putting my energy into this final and giving it all I've got."

Idowu's qualifying event came just 13 hours after Dai Greene had won hurdles gold for GB and team-mate Hannah England's 1500m silver.

"I stayed up last night and watched Dai and Hannah," Idowu told 5 live. "As soon as Dai crossed the line I was cheering and shouting, then stopped and went to bed.

"My job is to qualify as quickly as possible for the final and then win - and I'm one step closer to doing that."

Tiffany Porter, who moved from the United States to take up British nationality last year, cruised through the 100m hurdle heats in 12.84, 0.3 seconds behind the favourite, Australia's Sally Pearson.

"Times don't really matter at this point, its all about qualifying for the next round and I'm just happy that I did that," she said.

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