Steve Cram column

By Steve Cram BBC Sport commentator

Idowu produced the fifth longest triple jump in indoor history

Phillips Idowu's gold medal was a brilliant way to end an encouraging weekend for the Great Britain team.

If you had said before the World Indoor Championships he would have to jump 17.75m to win gold, he might have been worried.

But athletes have these moments when they know they are in form and produce a world-class performance completely out of the blue.

That gold medal will give Idowu a massive lift.

Jonathan Edwards's career really took off when he produced that phenomenal wind-assisted jump of 18.43m in the European Cup in Lille in 1995.

That one jump took him to another level, which he then converted into a gold medal at the World Championships in Gothenburg.

And Edwards has always said Idowu has had the ability to produce a jump as long as he did in Valencia.

That leap would have won him gold at the Worlds last year, as well as in the Sydney Olympics.

He looks in superb shape - there is absolutely no reason why he cannot maintain that form towards the summer and the Olympic Games.

He is now one of the favourites for Beijing, he has proven that to us and himself now.

Any athlete would love to be going to the Olympic Games as one of the top three ranked athletes in the world - that is what you train for.

Deep down he'll have a very high expectation of himself, so he must not get distracted by the attention he is going to get.

In terms of the overall picture for Great Britain, I would say don't put too much relevance to our performance in Valencia

If he were very young, then I would be a little bit worried, but Phillips is 29 and has been around long enough to know the score.

The one thing I said to him after I interviewed him was "stay fit mate". He has been injury-prone in the past.

So it is important his coach John Herbert - who was a very good triple jumper himself - and the people around him help him avoid injury and maintain his focus towards Beijing.

I felt sorry for Britain's Jenny Meadows, who finished in fifth in the women's 800m final.

That race was messy as all the runners were waiting for Ukraine's Tetiana Petlyuk to take the front, but when that did not happen, they all wondered what to do next.

But all credit to Australia's Tamsyn Lewis, who is not a great athlete, who took the challenge on.

If you said to any of those athletes that all you had to do to win gold was beat Lewis, they would have said: "Thank you very much," particularly Jenny.

But she is still learning her trade. She can build on this experience and aim for a place in the Olympic 800m final.

Mo Farah, who finished sixth in the men's 3000m, is not in great shape at the moment.

He has not had too many races because of injuries, but then again if you get close to Australia's Craig Mottram, then you're not doing too badly.

606: DEBATE At last Idowu has fulfilled his youthful promise, let's hope he can carry it forward to the Olympics douglasmcdouglas

Neither of them could do much with the Kenyans and Ethiopians ahead of them.

I don't think he will be too disappointed, he wasn't expected to get into the top three or four, the top six would have been his target and he has achieved that.

In terms of the overall picture for Great Britain, I would say don't put too much relevance to our performance in Valencia.

We won seven medals in at the Indoors in Birmingham in 2003 and then had a rotten World Championships in the summer.

We won three medals in events that don't take place outdoors - the men's and women's 60m and the pentathlon.

There were one or two disappointing performances but on the whole, a gold medal and four silvers is progress.

Steve Cram was talking to Pranav Soneji