Jessica Ennis-Hill admits she could be tempted to compete at the World Athletics Championships in August after a stirring return to heptathlon at the prestigious Hypo Meeting in Götzis.

Ennis-Hill, who was competing in her first heptathlon since winning gold at London 2012, finished with 6,520 points – a score that would have earned bronze at the 2013 world championships – as she ended up fourth behind the winner, Brianne Theisen-Eaton of Canada.

And after showing her competitive fires had not dampened by holding off Theisen-Eaton in an elbows-out sprint down the home straight to win a thrilling 800m, she professed herself highly satisfied with her weekend’s work. “I’m really pleased,” she said. “If someone had said I would get 6,500 I would have grabbed that with both hands. And looking at my individual scores, some of them are not very special, so to come away with that is great.”

The decision over whether Ennis-Hill goes to the world championships will be based on two considerations: whether she can put in an uninterrupted block of training over the next three months, and whether she shows enough in training to suggest she is a realistic contender for the podium in Beijing.

“If I can get the speed work done in that amount of time then I will go,” she said. “If I’m a medal contender I’ll go. But I don’t want to go to the world championships as I’ve come into this event. I want to be more prepared. It’s a long way to go to not be quite ready.”

Ennis-Hill’s initial target in Götzis was to score 6,200, the qualifying standard for next year’s Rio Olympics. But that target was soon demolished – along with even the most optimistic pre-event predictions of her coach, Toni Minichiello. It was an especially noteworthy achievement given that Ennis-Hill had given birth to her son, Reggie, 10 months ago, had problems with her achilles, and is not expecting to be back to her best until next summer.

Yet suddenly her hopes of defending her Olympic title do not seem fantastical. When asked whether she could get back to her very best she nodded. “Yeah, I’m really encouraged by the weekend’s performances,” she said. “Some of my events have been pretty poor or pretty standard but if I can go and get some proper training in there’s a lot more to come.”

Ennis-Hill started day two in third place, behind Theisen-Eaton and the Dutch athlete Dafne Schippers, but after a moderate long jump of 6.16m and a javelin of 42.60m – both way below her best – she had slipped to fifth. Schippers withdrew with a knee injury after the javelin, bumping her up a place, but Ennis-Hill was still in a tight scrum of competitors going into the final event of the day, the 800m.

She knew she needed to run a time of 2:33.02 to ensure she made the Olympic qualification standard – but the way she stormed into the lead from the off showed she wanted to make a statement.

“I was a bit frustrated at the start of the 800m because felt I could’ve thrown better in javelin and I’d like to have done a better long jump,” she said. “I didn’t quite know what I was going to have in the 800m but as soon as the gun went I just felt really good.”

On the final straight Theisen-Eaton attempted to overtake her, only for Ennis-Hill to fight back for victory in 2min 09.37sec. But Ennis-Hill denied that she was sending a message to the Canadian. “It was not so much a message to her but a message to myself that I’ve still got that competitive edge, that strength to dig really deep, even when I’m not on for winning or scoring a PB,” she said.

Ennis-Hill knows, however, that there are still things to work on, especially her sprint speed, which let her down in Saturday’s 100m hurdles and 200m. “I think speed events is something that I’m lacking at the moment, but Toni and I are both just really pleased because we’ve had the frustration of my achilles,” she said. “It’s a really nice feeling to have the team back together and be performing so well.”

But there was no such joy for Morgan Lake, the talented 18-year-old British heptathlete, who ended a disappointing competition by pulling out of the 800m with 250m remaining. Lake, a double world junior champion last year, had taken a break from her A-Level exams to chase the Olympic qualifying standard but she was falling far short when she suddenly walked off the track.

“My heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t have the motivation to go on,” she said. “It was a bit of a push to come out here. I haven’t been able to train but I thought it would be OK. Obviously it wasn’t. It’s not only the training, I haven’t been able to focus on athletics at all.”

Meanwhile Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who pulled out of Götzis with a minor knee injury, now knows the scale of challenge she faces in Beijing in August. Theisen-Eaton winning score of 6,808 was the highest in a heptathlon since Ennis-Hill’s 6,955 at London 2012. The prospect of all three heptathletes facing each other in Beijing is a mouthwatering one – although Ennis may yet decide it is prudent to defer the battle until next year’s Rio Olympics.