Phillips Idowu has soared to the top of the world triple-jump rankings after he cleared 17.55metres at the Venizelia meeting in Greece.

The Hackney-born athlete's best effort, in his first outdoor event of the season, was five centimetres further than the previous best this year set by Cuban David Giralt.

Idowu won the World Indoor Championships title in Valencia three months ago and has a strong chance of going into August's Olympics as favourite for gold.

It was the best start to a season for Idowu, who was sixth at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and won Commonwealth gold in Melbourne two years ago. Meanwhile, Dwain Chambers has spoken of his desire to inspire others not to use performance-enhancing drugs after he returned to outdoor competition in Britain with victory in the 100metres at the British League in Birmingham.

Chambers won in 10.28sec yesterday - still 0.07sec outside the official 'A' standard Olympic qualifying time - but he remains upbeat about the weeks ahead after meeting with officials at UK Sport to help them in their fight against drugs.

Chambers said: "I thought it was the right thing to inspire others not to go down that road because I am a prime example when you choose to go down the road that I did."