Macey overcomes another hurdle

The battling Briton had five pain-killing injections and was already contending with a leg injury when a longstanding elbow problem recurred during the penultimate event, the javelin.

This badly restricted Macy's movement and prevented him from improving on his first throw of 54.61m.

While Nool threw 67.01m and Dvorak 68.53m to establish commanding margins.

But problems had begun for Macey during Tuesday's first event, the 110m hurdles.

Already sporting heavy strapping on his injured left leg, a series of false starts - two caused by Macey himself - left the Briton in some pain and perilously close to disqualification.

He eventually got away, though, and responded with a personal best of 14.34secs - one-hundredth of a second inside his previous best mark.

Macey takes a deserved breather

The other heat was won by Dvorak in a lightning 13.80secs.

Next was the discus, in which a poor first effort of 43.49 metres by Macey was followed by an even worse second attempt.

But, once again, he dug deep to win his pool with a throw of 46.96m, beating Dvorak into second place. The Czech had a best throw of 45.51m.

With his injuries worsening, Macey struggled on in the pole vault but was unable to put further pressure on Dvorak and Nool.

Continuing to battle through the pain barrier, Macey reached a height of just 4.70m, while Nool and Dvorak cleared more than five metres to widen the gap.