Holmes has been dogged by injuries during her winter training

The 33-year-old, who has spent most of the winter training with Mozambique's Maria Mutola in South Africa, clocked a time of four minutes 09.15 seconds.

Jason Gardener won the 60m in a time of 6.54secs, the fastest time in the world this year.

American Tim Harden was second with British youngster Dwayne Grant third.

Holmes, who had been in contention throughout her race, made her decisive move with one lap to go.

Russian Yulia Kosenkova was second with Sonja Roman back in third.

"That went well today," admitted Holmes afterwards. "I had nothing to prove, it was my first race and I came here just to get the win.

Match Results Russia 61 points World Select 56.5 GB & NI 52 Sweden 41.5 Italy 26

"The race was slow but you just have to go with the flow. I was very pleased with my speed on the last lap, especially at this time of the year."

Her training partner Mutola won the 800m with a comfortable win in 1.58.46, a new stadium record.

Gardener did not have the best of starts but came through strongly in the last 10m for a comfortable win to set him up for the season.

"Everything has gone well in my winter training and before today I was just concentrating on a fast time to set me up for the rest of the season," he said.

Abi Oyepitan achieved a World Indoor Championship qualifying time in winning the 60m in 7.27sec, which was also a new personal best.

European under-23 champion Helen Karagounis also clocked a personal best to win the 400m.

Karagounis fought hard all the way to win in 53.31 and claim a close victory over the experienced Natalya Lavshuk of Russia.

I am quite disappointed because I expected to jump that record today Yelena Isinbayeva

Yelena Isinbayeva just missed out on the world indoor pole vault record after failing three times at 4.81m.

She won the competition with 4.76, pushing archrival and compatriot Svetlana Feofanova into second with 4.66.

Dwayne Grant, making his British debut and running for the first time over 200m indoors, clinched second place in 21.44secs.

Commonwealth 1500m champion Michael East was outsprinted over 3,000m by Italy's Salvatore Vincenti while Du'aine Ladejo was a disappointing third in the 400m.

In the high jump, Commonwealth bronze medallist Ben Challenger was edged into fourth place by world indoor champion Sweden's Stefan Holm.

Challenger was eliminated after clearing 2.24m.