Olympic bronze-medallist Kelly Sotherton refuses to be complacent despite being the clear favourite to claim the gold medal in the heptathlon at the Commonwealth Games.

The 29-year-old has a personal best of 6,547 points which, along with the withdrawal of Ghana's World Championship bronze-medallist Margaret Simpson, sees Sotherton heavily tipped to claim the title in Melbourne.

Simpson beat Sotherton by 50 points to claim third at last year's World Championships in Helsinki where the Englishwoman finished fifth - a disappointment a year after claiming bronze at the Athens Olympics.

However, Sotherton said: "I imagine I would have been favourite going into it anyway because I had the highest score, although she did beat me in Helsinki.

"It makes it slightly easier but then I can't be complacent because there are other people in it who have scores of 6200s or 6300s.

"You never know what is going to happen on the day or who is going to come up from behind so I'm not taking anything for granted."

Simpson was third at the previous Games in Manchester in which Jane Jamieson and Kylie Wheeler claimed an Australian one-two with Sotherton back in seventh in her first year attempting the event.

The following year saw the Birchfield Harrier choose to pursue the heptathlon after considering the 400m hurdles and she developed further under Charles van Commenee which culminated in her Olympic bronze.

However, Van Commenee accepted a job in his native Holland and Sotherton was left to prepare for the following season with no coach in place and instead hired specialist event coaches.

"I was dumped in it," Sotherton said. "My coach just left and went off to Holland.

"So I had no choice really but to pick people up without really any planning.

"I didn't know what to do. Don't forget it was only my second year at that level of competition so I think I did reasonably well considering but now I think I'll do even better."

Now the Isle of Wight-born athlete feels she has benefited from learning the hard way and has a far more unified approach to her training programme.

"It's different this year because at the end of the day I was struggling to get all my coaches in and time manage with them but now I've got a structure so that is the difference between this time last year and now.

"So everyone knows what their goal is and everyone knows what they have to work towards where nobody really knew last year.

"There is more structure in our training. I co-ordinate my training programme, I have to write it out and it has everyone else's plan in it."

Although Simpson will not be Down Under, Wheeler claimed victory with 6,031 points at the Australian trials and Sotherton will also face a challenge from Jamieson and fellow Englishwoman Jessica Ennis.

However, she is now happy with her training although she refused to be anything other than realistic.

"Training is going the way it should be going. I'm not going to gush and say it is going amazingly well.

"But it's going OK. I'm quite happy with it."