After a torrid week for athletics, it was left to Kelly Sotherton to provide a restorative tonic. Dwain Chambers may have been crucified for allowing tainted ambition to blight his Olympic dream, but the British heptathlete showed that she is up for a good clean fight with a living legend.

Sotherton came second to Carolina Klüft, the graceful Swede whose special gifts enable her to dominate the heptathlon, in a special three-event challenge at the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham.

However, the margin of defeat was only 18 points and the way Sotherton notched a personal best of 8.17 seconds in the 60 metres hurdles before a magnificent 400 metres offered proof that she does not think she will be merely competing for silver in Beijing.

So good was her 400 metres lap of 52.47sec – the best by a Briton this year and eighth on the all-time list – that she said that she would like to make the 4 x 400m relay team in Beijing. It could be quite an Olympics for the multi-taskers, because Klüft is also considering adding the long jump to her Games programme. “The 400 metres is a teller and it shows I’m in really good shape,” Sotherton said. But for a disappointing long jump, she might have enjoyed a rare victory over a woman who has forgotten what it is like to lose.

The National Indoor arena crowd was also treated to a world record as Kenenisa Bekele, of Ethiopia, took 0.34sec off Haile Gebreselassie’s existing two-mile mark in clocking 8min 4.35sec. Christine Ohuruogu, the world 400 metres champion, made her solitary indoor appearance of the year and clocked 23.41sec to finish second in the 200 metres after a disappointing 60 metres. Jenny Meadows and Phillips Idowu continued their good early-season form in the 800 metres and triple jump respectively.