Athletics: Jade jumps for silver

Jade Johnson was better known for her looks than her leaps before the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

She posed for the lad's mag FHM and allowed her 6ft body to be painted red and white for publicity pictures for England's Games kit.

A Commonwealth long jump silver added competitive credibility but nothing was expected in the higher realms of European Championship competition.

Yet the 22-year-old Londoner led the qualifying competition with 6.60m on Tuesday and opened last night with 6.66m, more than in Manchester.

Then in the second round she landed the best jump of her career at 6.72m, increased that later by a centimetre and ended up with the silver behind Russian Tatyana Kotova, last year's world silver medallist.