Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold

by Jessica Ennis

  ‘Oh, come on, you’re always training,’ they would say.

  I was, and it was hard, but I already knew, at the age of fifteen, that I wanted to be an athlete. I had fledgling ideas of being a chef or a journalist, but deep down I knew that, for some reason, I wanted this.

  ‘All I want to do is be on top of the podium,’ I told my parents.

  ‘You will be,’ they said.

  ‘But when?’

  ‘One day. Soon.’

  By the sixth form I was training every night and competing at weekends. It was relentless. I have kept my friends from school, but we were doing different things then. My friends generally had more money than me too, either because their parents would help or because they could go out and get part-time jobs, but I struggled for time and money. It was my choice to do this, but I also felt as if I was missing out.

  It was around that time when Chell began calling me ‘the reluctant athlete’, and there were plenty of times when I just did not want to go training. There were other times, after more hard words had left me a crumpled wreck crying in my room, that my dad decided he was going to go down to the track and have a word with this coach.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘It will only make it worse.’

  My parents have never really been ones to intervene. They are the antithesis of the pushy parents so prevalent around sport and schools. Chell and I would go to the English Schools competitions and be amazed at the pressure heaped on the kids by their parents. Many would scream at them and berate them if the times did not add up. It was sad to see and made you understand why so many dropped out. In fairness to Chell, he always had a long-term plan. Many coaches want the reflected glory of their athletes’ trophies and titles, but Chell was never like that. He was in it for the long haul and said that the plan was not to make me a great junior but a great senior. For someone with an impatient streak, that was hard to grasp, but I am glad that I did not have a coach or parents living out their dreams through me and driving me headlong towards burn-out.

  The one time my dad did intervene was when a girl at school said something racist about me to my friend Charlotte. She told me, I told my parents, and Dad went round to the girl’s house and shouted at her on the doorstep. It probably unearthed old wounds for him, but it is the only time I have ever encountered anything like that. I never consider the colour of my parents and I was amazed when I saw on Twitter that someone had posted a message: ‘Jessica Ennis’s dad is black – I can’t believe it.’ What couldn’t they believe?

  Normally, though, Dad was the sort to offer gentle shoves rather than full-blooded pushes. My grandad, Rod Powell, also played his part in teasing the reluctant athlete back into the fray. He would offer me incentives, perhaps five pounds, if I got a personal best at this competition or won there. He had been an active sportsman himself, and played football and tennis into his sixties, so he loved the fact I was doing so much, albeit that interest probably helped alienate Carmel all the more as I received both cash and attention.

  But during the sixth form I did try to do everything. My parents are quite liberal and would allow me to go out as long as I was in by midnight. A couple of other friends from school, Georgina and Lauren, had parents who were much stricter and did not like them going out at all. However, one time I remember Lauren and I both sneaked out and headed to a bar. Unfortunately for me, Eddie was in the bar and he told his mum, who told mine. I was undone by my first love. Mum was mad but not crazy, fixing me with guilt-inducing eyes and saying: ‘Have you got something to tell me?’

  The turning point came when I was sixteen. I went to a friend’s house party and there was a lot of alcohol. Someone spilt drinks and someone else tried to clean the carpet by pouring bleach all over it. I drank too much and crashed out. The next morning Grandad arrived, as planned, to take me to my athletics competition. I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to ignore the crushing headache. I really did not want to go, but I knew I had no choice. I got out of the house and was sick before I even got into Grandad’s car. We drove to the track at Woodburn Road in silence and I could tell how annoyed he was. I got changed and then I was sick again. I saw Chell and tried to hide my condition from him. It was a horrible feeling and I realized I could not do both now. I had to choose between athletics and a normal teenage, party-going lifestyle. It was the day I decided the sacrifice was worth it. There would be time for partying later on and I did not want to look back with regrets. From that day on I would not even go out before a big day’s training, because I knew that I would not get the maximum from the session. I swallowed my pride, walked out onto the track at Woodburn Road, somehow jumped a personal best in the high jump, and that was the end of the reluctant athlete.

  3

  TADPOLE

  I was improving year on year and I found that exciting. I was not imagining Olympic Games and global glory, but the slow rise through the junior ranks was enough to keep me interested.

  I managed to trade my first hand-me-down spikes from Nicola Gautier for a new pair from the Keep On Running shop near the Don Valley. That was a big deal, but I needed them because it was growing more serious by the year. In truth, it always had been, thanks to Chell’s approach and my desire. So I started competing abroad, getting picked to represent Great Britain in a four-team challenge in Switzerland when I was sixteen. The heptathlon was becoming my focus now and I liked it for the variety and the challenge of trying to do seven events. I scored 5194 points and came second. It was a nerve-wracking experience being away from home, but I was managing to bottle the fears. I still felt intimidated when I saw the bigger, more muscle-clad girls at the start, but I was measuring myself against myself, previous scores from previous years, and felt happier doing that. The strange thing about athletics is that you are up against rivals, but have little power to influence what they do. There can be a good deal of mind games and posturing, but essentially it’s an individual event, you against yourself, your best versus your inner fears.

  It was around that time that I got my first Lottery funding. It was £500 a year and was a big deal to me. Some athletes blew it on stupid things, but I needed it, not least for physio. Chell was always keen on getting me checked out and I was young when I first started seeing Alison Rose, a physiotherapist who would spend most of 2004 patching Kelly Holmes together and preventing her coming apart at raggedy seams as she ground her way to two gold medals. Ali would go on to be a key part of a group that we would christen Team Ennis, and would be a confidante and friend when things reached breaking point.

  Initially, I felt differently, and could not understand how this physio treatment was going to be good for me. She hurt me so much, with violent use of elbows, and I did not want to go back, only to be told I needed it by Chell. He was right, too – one of the few times I would admit as much.

  My first big event abroad was the World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada, in July 2003. Mum came to watch with my grandparents because they had family out there, and so they went to visit them. The biggest competition I had been to so far was the English Schools, so it was a huge step up. I did not notice the tall, gangly Jamaican who won the 200 metres in a championship record time and who went by the name of Usain Bolt, and was just thinking about my own performance. The heptathlon takes place over two days, with four events on day one – the hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 metres, and three on day two – long jump, javelin and 800 metres; it was in Canada where it became blindingly obvious that I had a good day and a bad one.

  I started well but faded to fifth place on day two. One of the top girls came up to me afterwards.

  ‘You should have won it,’ she said.

  I smiled and thanked her, but I knew I was not going to get anywhere until I sorted out the second day. It had ruined everything. It was the same the following year when I went to the World Junior Championships in Grosseto in Italy and again suffered a second-day slump into eighth place. I grew frustrated because I had tasted the thrill of bein
g near the top, only for it to be ripped away by weaker events. I decided I had to go away and work harder on day two.

  Things were still not great between me and Carmel at home. I only met my paternal grandad twice and when I was a teenager he fell ill and Dad flew to America. He was dying, and Dad was really cut up about it, because he wished that they had remained a closer family. While he was away, things deteriorated and I revised for my GCSEs to the backbeat of slammed doors and raised voices.

  I had the chance to go to America myself in 2004 when it came to choosing universities. I had been offered the possibility of going to East Carolina University on a scholarship. I was surprised because all I had done was go to the World Juniors and World Youths by that point, and I did not understand how they even knew about me, but I thought I should take a look and so Mum and I flew out there. They invited some of the track girls around to give us the hard sell. They were exactly how I imagined Americans: getting pizzas in, being hugely enthusiastic and gushing, ‘Oh my God, it’s so amazing.’ I felt that they were so different to the British and in many ways the whole set-up seemed dated. It was just so unlike everything I was used to and, although the facilities were great and Coach Kaiser sends me messages still, I thought it would all feel odd and unsettling. When one of the girls said, ‘And once a month we get to party’, I decided that was it.

  Everybody was pleased. Chell had said to me: ‘If you go anywhere else, it’s not going to work.’ I knew I had a great set-up and that he was a great coach doing amazing things for me, but it was an important stage of my life and, having been with Chell since 1999, I now wanted to assess my options.

  But with Chell whispering in my ear and Carolina a fading memory, I chose to go to Sheffield University. It might sound parochial, but I love this place. I was made in Sheffield and, from the Don Valley Stadium, where the smell of the track can still transport me back to being a ten-year-old girl sitting on the concrete steps, to the Peace Gardens, where I would one day be treated to a civic reception, I feel this city is part of me.

  I had also started seeing Andy that year. He went to King Ecgbert’s like me, but was three years older, which makes a big difference at that age. He had gone out with my friend Charlotte’s big sister and thought of me as Little Jess. We met on a night out in a club called Republic. He says I chased him around the dance floor, but I really didn’t. We talked and exchanged numbers. A few days later I went for a drink with my friend Georgina and she persuaded me to text him and invite him to join us. He came along and I liked him. We went out on our own soon afterwards and, although I didn’t want to tempt fate, I knew from the start that I was going to fall deeply in love with him. He was on his year out from doing a construction management degree and I thought it was healthy that he was not into athletics. There are a few couples within the sport, but I like a release, and when I see my friends I want to know how they are doing.

  I stayed put in Sheffield, but I still wanted to leave home. I knew that halls of residence would be far too distracting and could derail my ambitions, so I moved in with Hannah, one of the other girls in Chell’s group.

  I was still struggling for money. My great uncle, Grandad’s sister’s husband, Uncle Terry, realized that and helped me out by buying me a car, which meant I could get to training and competitions, without having to rely on my parents and Grandad. I took out a student loan, but that was going on tuition fees and books, so I got a job on the reception at the Virgin Active gym. I hated it as much as my previous part-time jobs. There had been an ill-fated spell working as a waitress in a city hotel. That ended badly when I spilt gravy all over one of the guests. The chefs also persuaded me that I had made the right choice in not pursuing that as a career as they were rude and horrible, terrorizing the waitresses and never accepting that anything could ever be their fault. I also took a job at Pizza Hut. Charlotte and I went in to pick up a pizza one day and saw some job openings and thought it would be fun so we applied. Alas, it was not quite as much fun as we had thought as we greased pans, took phone orders and tried to ignore some of the men who worked there and were a bit strange. The upside was we did get free pizzas after every shift. It was some time before I realized this might not be ideal when trying to pursue an athletics career.

  I had got some money together, although some of it was for one last blow-out before university, and so in the summer of 2004 six of us went to San Antonio, the party capital of Ibiza, before we parted ways. Andy was worried about me going but had no need to be, even though it quickly descended into carnage and a series of rows so bad that I honestly did not think any of us would ever speak to each other again. However, amid the strops and the foam that engulfed the dance floor at Pacha, there was one significant fact about that holiday that stuck in my memory. It came when I picked up a newspaper and saw a picture of Kelly Sotherton, the British heptathlete, receiving her bronze medal at the Athens Olympics which were taking place at the same time. Her coach, Charles van Commenee, had branded her a wimp and reduced her to tears for not getting the silver medal. I got ready for another night’s clubbing and could not imagine that both of those people would have roles to play in my own Olympic journey.

  I chose to study psychology. I was particularly interested in social psychology and how people reacted to one another. A number of famous studies captured my imagination. One of them was the controversial Milgram experiment where ordinary people believed they were giving huge electric shocks to innocent people. The theory was that people could be coerced into acting in appalling ways due to an unwavering belief in obedience. I found this fascinating, the idea that people could act against their natures due to external pressures, and I became interested in people’s perceptions of psychological disorders. It is so easy to say to people ‘snap out of it’, without paying attention to the hardwiring of the brain and the biological side of things.

  I did my dissertation on self-regulation. Broadly speaking, it is the idea that there is an area of the brain that self-regulates, but if, for example, you were on a diet, you would only have a certain amount of strength and willpower. The area becomes fatigued but you can train it. My tutor specialized in self-regulation in cricketers and it is an important area in sport, where repetition and visualization play important roles in success.

  The psychology of sports is interesting and there are lots of issues that affect people. It is an elitist, cut-throat world and it is, inevitably, results-driven. That can lead to lots of pressure and even desperate measures. In athletics, eating disorders are not uncommon. I occasionally see people who I can tell are suffering, and I have heard lots of stories about long-distance runners suffering from bulimia and anorexia.

  It is hard because in athletics there is a lot of pressure to look a certain way. That is why people need to be careful about the language they use. I was lucky in the sense that I have never had problems with my weight. I have always had a sweet tooth and big appetite, but my mum was skinny and so it is more down to genetics with me. However, the flip side of that is that you need to be quite muscly to be a heptathlete. When I started doing sessions in the gym I just did not want to be good at it. I would not push myself because I felt big muscles were unattractive and none of my friends at school had them. Many girls just do not want to stand out in their teenage years and, apart from when it came to athletics, I was the same.

  Chell grew frustrated with this attitude, because he could see that I was not pushing myself.

  ‘I don’t want to lift this,’ I would tell him.

  ‘You’ve got to if you want to get better.’

  ‘I don’t know if I do then.’

  As time wore on I realized Chell was right and that, if I wanted to be a successful, then I needed to do the gym sessions properly. My perspective changed. If I could be guaranteed to win an Olympic gold medal and had to have big muscles to do it, then of course I would, but as a teenage girl I was more self-conscious. I would not wear certain things and, to some extent, I am the same now and will usually
cover my arms. I look at myself in the mirror and think I am a bit butch, but you get to a point where you finally understand that looks do not matter so much.

  I was not a normal student and did not lead a normal student life. In my second year I competed in Cudworth and Turkey, Grimsby and Lithuania. The hurdles and the high jump were my best events, but I liked the variety of the heptathlon with its seven disciplines and numerous ways to foul up. In 2004 the press had damned us as the worst ever British team to go to the World Junior Championships. The medal count was terrible and we were really slated. That was my first taste of a negative media and it was quite hard, but in July 2005, aged nineteen, I went to Kaunas, the second biggest city in Lithuania, for the European Juniors.

  Finally, it all came together. Everything went well for once and the work we had done on the second day paid off. I scored 5891 points to take the gold medal. The rain was cold and hard, but as I got the medal and heard the National Anthem piped through the stadium, flecked by a few hardy fans, I felt close to complete. I remembered the times I had told my dad that all I ever wanted to do was stand on the top of the podium. It was an intensely emotional experience, because it felt like it had taken so long to get there. The hotel was in the middle of the town and there was a lot going on, but I didn’t go mad socially and was just happy with having achieved a goal.

  I was taking athletics far more seriously than some other competitors at that age. As I have mentioned, the act of juggling a fledgling sporting career with a normal teenage life is nigh-on impossible and that trip to Lithuania showed it; one of the team let himself down and I have a bad memory of him throwing up over himself on the way back to the airport. In some ways you can understand it as it is the first time a lot of people have gone away from home, but it can get out of hand and you hear grisly stories of girls having their stomachs pumped. It can get messy.