The continuing crisis that is Kelly Sotherton’s sixth event of the heptathlon showed no sign of stabilising yesterday when Great Britain’s Olympic bronze medal-winner in 2004 finished seventh in the World Combined Events Challenge in Götzis, Austria. On course to finish runner-up to Carolina Klüft, Sotherton barely scraped over 30 metres in the javelin, placing 26th of 27 competitors.

Seven metres down on her Athens javelin throw, and ten metres short of the career-best mark she set three years ago, Sotherton fell back six places to eighth position before regaining one place in the final event, the 800 metres. Since 2004, Sotherton’s javelin efforts have cost her medals at the World and European Championships.

Sotherton’s throw of 33.09 metres at the 2005 World Championships, in Helsinki, was described as “pathetic” by Athletics 2006, the sport’s global annual. Then, after managing 32.04 on her way to winning the Commonwealth title in Melbourne last year, she described her throwing as “abysmal”.

Yesterday, it was Mick Hill, Sotherton’s new coach, who best summed up the frustration. “I am flabbergasted and very disappointed with her,” Hill, the 1993 World Championship bronze medal-winner, said. He became Sotherton’s javelin coach after she recorded only 30.05 at the European Championships in Gothenburg last year.

Sotherton’s best mark in Götzis was 30.19. “A lot of time has gone into producing a better result than we have got,” Aston Moore, the UK Athletics senior performance manager for combined events, said. Scoring 6,210 points, Sotherton is now looking up in the British rankings to Jessica Ennis, who has recorded 6,388 this season.

Only two months ago, at the European Indoor Championships, in Birmingham, Sotherton came closer to beating Klüft in combined events than any athlete in the past five years, but that was in a pentathlon, with javelin excluded. The Swede scored 6,681 yesterday.

Marlon Devonish, a member of Britain’s Olympic sprint relay champions in Athens, made an encouraging start to the international season, finishing third in the 100 metres in the World Athletics Tour meeting in Hengelo, Netherlands, recording 10.25sec. Devonish has spent three weeks training with Francis Obikwelu, the European 100 metres champion and Olympic silver medal-winner from Portugal.

Nicola Sanders, the European indoor 400 metres champion, withdrew from her first race of the season because of bad weather at the Inter-Counties Championships in Bedford.

Tim Benjamin has pulled out of tomorrow’s Artur Takac Memorial international meeting in Belgrade after being admitted to hospital in Cardiff. The 400 metres runner suffered a complication on Friday after an injection into his back to relax his hamstrings.