Championships Open With Question of Identity ISTANBUL - At this stage, it takes something remarkable for a woman to draw a bigger crowd than Sally Pearson at a hurdles event. But the sniping surrounding the nomination of American-born hurdler Tiffany Porter as British team captain here in the year of the London Olympics was enough to do the trick on Friday, the opening day of these world indoor track and field championships. There may not be a more impressive female athlete in any discipline at the moment than Pearson, the Australian with a swagger in her step and silk in her technique who is threatening the world record in the 100-meter hurdles. Indoors is much less familiar territory for a Queenslander accustomed to outdoor sunshine, but Pearson was trademark smooth again on Friday despite dubious acoustics in this new arena that left less experienced hurdlers stumbling out of the blocks thinking they had heard a second report of the starter's pistol when it was just the echo of a single shot (Istanbul, a would-be Olympic host, can do better). Pearson was concerned herself at first but kept pushing: winning the opening heat in the 60-meter hurdles in a national record time of 7.85 seconds. Porter later recorded the night's second best time, winning the third heat in 8 seconds flat. Her captaincy has hardly passed unnoticed in Britain. Porter, 24, was born and raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan and represented the United States as a junior before switching allegiances to Britain last year and competing in the world championships in Daegu, South Korea. Porter, whose mother is from Britain and whose father is from Nigeria, had never lived in Britain when she made the switch, which prompted some British commentators to label her a "Plastic Brit," the snide term reserved for those who are British in documents only. Porter, who has had a British passport since birth, has explained that she has always viewed herself as multicultural and that she chose to represent Britain not because she was struggling against the best hurdlers in the United States but because she preferred Britain's training and support structure. But when Charles van Commenee, the head coach of UK Athletics, announced her as captain at a team news conference here on Thursday, a reporter from The Daily Mail newspaper asked her if she could sing the first two lines of "God Save the Queen." Porter said she knew them but was not much of a singer. Asked then if she could simply recite them, she answered, looking increasingly edgy: "I don't think that's necessary." Van Commenee, a Dutchman, rushed to her defense: "I choose the team captain for her leadership skills and her athletic skills and her credibility, not her ability to memorize words, or her vocal skills," he said. Several of Porter's teammates also have offered support, including men's distance star Mo Farah, who deemed the line of questioning inappropriate. On Friday, UK Athletics banned the Daily Mail from further British team events in Istanbul, although that has no bearing on the paper's access to the championships as a whole. Porter declined to address the nationality or captaincy issue on Friday after her heat, but she delivered the traditional captain's speech the night before at the team meeting. "It was absolutely inspirational," said British 1,500-meter runner Lewis Moses. I've got no qualms about her being captain at all. "We're supporting Tiffany, and she'll do a fantastic job," he added. Let's just hope she gets a national anthem on the podium, you know, and what a way to throw it back in their faces. That would require quite a performance in view of Pearson's form, but there was surprisingly no national anthem for Britain on opening night. Only two gold medals were awarded. One went to the American Ryan Whiting, who won the men's shot put with a throw of 22 meters. The other went to Natalia Dobrynska, who set a world record of 5,013 points to win the pentathlon ahead of the British star Jessica Ennis, who had to settle for an unexpected silver medal with a national record of 4,965 points. Dobrynska is the reigning Olympic champion, but had, until this race, been eclipsed by Ennis and Tatyana Chernova of Ukraine, the reigning world champion in the heptathlon, who finished fifth. "I've always said it's not just between me and Chernova," Ennis said. It's an Olympic year, and everyone raises their game and you can see that today.