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

by Jessica Ennis

  It did not go through my head until Kelly said it, the idea that I might have been cheated out of a medal at my first World Championships, but she was right that people had suspicions. Not a lot was said but there were raised eyebrows and rolled eyeballs. Everyone felt that she was not right. There was something about her, putting up bigger scores than she had done before her ban. It tainted the competition because there is a nice feeling in the heptathlon of all being in it together. Unfortunately, drug-taking is part of sport and you try to balance your cynicism with your naivety. There are the classic things that are supposedly telltale signs – the braces on the teeth, the pitted skin, the deep voice. The grapevine whispers said that, whatever the IAAF – the governing body – had said about the World Championships being drug-free, Blonska was doing something very wrong.

  In Britain I do not think there is much of a problem and we lead the way in testing athletes. The ‘whereabouts’ system means that you have to say where you will be for an hour a day every day. That can be quite hard to keep track of and, in its early days, there were times when I had to change training sessions and I forgot to update my details. It meant I could easily have had a missed test against my name. Three of those and you get a doping ban. It became much easier when you could update your details online and now I have a testing slot of between 6 and 7 a.m. because I know that I am going to be at home at that time.

  That can still be uncomfortable and you may be fast asleep when you get the knock on the door and so you stumble downstairs in your PJs. You get to know the testers because they often cover the same area, but sometimes you may get a random test from an IAAF tester, perhaps a German man you’ve never met before, and so he comes into your house with his gloves and fridge and blood-testing kit.

  Once they came and I had been to the toilet two minutes before they arrived. So when they asked for a urine sample I couldn’t give one. We sat on the sofa watching BBC Breakfast, while I kept going back to the kitchen to swig more water. It is intensely frustrating because you just want to get on with the rest of your day and training. Now I always make sure I hold it in during the waking hours. It can be very uncomfortable but I know I cannot go to the loo before 7 a.m. because if I can’t perform for the testers they will have to stay with me until I can.

  It is a complicated process too. The athlete has to do everything so you fill in forms, separate the samples, screw the tops and divide the bottles. Now we have to wear gloves. I asked why and I was told that there is a substance people have used which they keep under their fingernails and then flick into the samples to neutralize the drugs.

  For me this is another world and I can’t comprehend why anybody would go to such lengths to cheat themselves and their rivals. The vast majority of athletes are first and foremost competing for the love of their sport rather than for great financial reward, though of course these days the potential for earning among top athletes is high, so I suppose some people might feel tempted to ditch their morals in order to get up there. But how you could gain any pleasure from success on those terms is beyond me.

  When I started competing on the international scene, Chell would always tell me to keep an eye on my water bottle. It sounded fanciful to me, but he was worried that somebody might spike it with something. I do not think anyone would do that, but once he put the thought in my head I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. So ‘water carrier’ was quickly added to his list of duties.

  But you have to take responsibility too. I was always taught that you can never shift the blame. It is why I don’t take many supplements because you don’t know, 100 per cent for sure, what is in it. There is an online system now where you can type in the ingredients and it will tell you whether it is prohibited or not, but even so I am sure there are some innocent people being snared in the system. You hear stories about people eating contaminated meat and, in the build-up to London we got an email, warning us to eat only British beef. I am glad the system is so stringent because there are certainly lots of dodgy cases, but it does not make it easy and I just wish that the same measures were implemented in every country. That is why I get annoyed when people start pointing fingers at our sport. Doping is talked about more in athletics, but I imagine it is in all sports. The bad stories never put me off, though. It’s a sport I love.

  There was some negative reaction when Christine Ohuruogu came back from a one year ban for missing three tests to win the 400 metres title in Osaka. I saw her case as being totally different to anyone who had failed a test. She had missed three tests, but the ‘whereabouts’ system is a lot clearer now than when it was first introduced. These days we can even text changes to let the testers know we have altered our plans. A lot of people don’t appreciate that athletes have the same chaotic lives as everyone else and can forget things, as Christine did. The process is so strict in Britain that I really can’t imagine how anyone could attempt to cheat, even if they were that way inclined.

  5

  CHINA GIRL

  In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow-clad mountains and a glittering lake, lies the little Austrian town of Götzis. The population fluctuates around the 10,000 mark but it increases each summer when the Hypo-Meeting takes place there. This is one of the biggest events in the calendar for the multi-eventers, outside of the major championships. The standard of the competition is out of kilter with the village-fete atmosphere, cut-throat competition being played out in front of people sunning themselves on grassy banks and tucking into bratwurst.

  On Friday 30 May 2008 the sun came out and I met the British press on the infield. We sat down and chatted. I knew that I was being talked up in the media as a good hope for a gold medal at the Olympics in Beijing later that summer. Did I think my rivals now regarded me as a serious contender? ‘I fear other people rather than thinking they’re walking round worrying about me,’ I replied. ‘I find it hard to imagine the Olympics. I don’t want to think about getting a medal. Deep down I know it’s what I’m going for, but I don’t want to get wrapped up in it.’

  There were other questions about Kelly and Klüft and Blonska. With Carolina deciding to turn her back on the heptathlon and just do the long jump at the Olympics, the pecking order had changed. Carolina was unbeatable, a quite incredible athlete who managed to tether that status to reality without ever losing her generosity. She was widely held in high regard, both as a rival and a person. It was different with Blonska. She had come back from that two-year drug ban in 2007 and won a silver medal at the World Championships. In athletics, there are always nods, winks and innuendos. Suspicions run rife. Rapid improvements or mysterious absences can lead to Chinese whispers of doubt.

  That Blonska had come back and scored so highly after her drug ban had caused concern and scepticism among some of the girls. Kelly was always more outspoken than me and again she went public with her remarks, saying that nobody spoke to Blonska. ‘We don’t support drug cheats,’ she added.

  I was philosophical and pragmatic about Blonska. She was competing in Götzis and she would be there at the Olympics, probably as the favourite now there was no Carolina. I had to beat her fair and square, whether she was playing by the same rules or not. It is one of the downsides to professional sport, the fact that some people will do anything to win regardless of their conscience.

  I had been 363 points adrift of Blonska in Osaka. It was a huge gulf but I had been working hard with Mick Hill and had improved my javelin by five metres. I had once queued up to get Mick’s autograph in Sheffield so it felt odd to have him helping me, and I think he probably looked at me and thought, ‘This girl can’t throw.’ If he did he never said it, though, and his boundless enthusiasm rubbed off.

  I was gaining something of a reputation for being sweet and nice, and the press guys on the infield mentioned that Chell had said I could be angry and was even known to swear. ‘We have arguments but so does every athlete and coach,’ I told them. ‘I get frustrated and angry and, yes, I swear. My boyfriend and I have decide
d we use foul language too much so we’re going to curb it. When I get frustrated I usually just cry, though. Sometimes, if I’ve had a bad session, I go home and cry. Other times I count to ten and try to get myself back together.’

  There was also mention of Kelly christening me ‘Tadpole’. I ducked the question, but the truth is I was hurt by it and did not like it. Chell always finds it harder to bury his feelings and so he let rip. ‘The comment was inappropriate and slightly insulting, but it’s part of Kelly’s make-up and I think that’s a bit sad,’ he said. ‘That’s how she competes, by using things like that. It’s potentially gamesmanship.’

  I wasn’t worried about that. I was already aware that the press was trying to build up a rivalry between the two of us. Sometimes this would get amusing, not least when I would read stories about the tadpole developing into a big fish. I am not a zoological expert, but even I knew tadpoles actually became frogs.

  But, sitting there on the grass, with Kelly absent through injury and the sun warming my neck, I felt relaxed and ready. I had added three strides to my javelin run-up since Osaka and was increasingly confident. I had had a slight niggle in my right foot but thought it was just down to the bulk of training and none of us were worried about it. I soon realized that it is dangerous to get ahead of yourself in this sport. You live in the moment. It is the only way to get the best out of your performance and the only way to stop fretting about how fate might kick you in the teeth at the cruellest moments.

  We had decided not to do much of an indoor season. The focus was all on the summer and China. In Olympic year the hype is cranked up until it is easy to forget that it is just another competition, the same rivals and the same track. The 2008 Hypo-Meeting at Götzis would tell me a lot about where I was and whether I was ready.

  I felt good. I had worked like a slave during the winter. It had started at the back end of 2007 with the dreaded hill runs. We go through to Christmas, trekking up and down the big, gradual hill in Chelsea Park in Nether Edge. It was around 150 metres long and we would run up and walk back down for our recovery. If we were walking down too slowly then Chell would bark at us from the bottom and let us know.

  ‘Pick it up! Too slow! Faster!’

  The boys might go on ahead, but we were all co-sufferers, caked in mud, breath steaming the freezing air, new aches and pains emerging with each run. We did three sets of five runs up that horrible hill. Then we would do two sets of four on the shorter one. A lot of athletes go warm-weather training in the winter, but I never saw the need. I figured that braving the elements of South Yorkshire was more likely to get me battle-hardened for Beijing.

  We would shiver in the car as we were driven back to the EIS for a cup of hot chocolate and then a weights session in the gym. That was our Sunday. I would look at the people getting up late and buying the papers for a long, leisurely read and get jealous.

  The sessions inside the EIS were just as bad. The lactic acid filled the muscles and made my legs feel leaden. It was not just my legs either. The acid got into my arms, my bum, my hamstrings. It spread like a black stain until it was constant and then I would feel this crushing pain behind my eyes.

  ‘I’ve got lactic in my brain,’ I told Chell. He shook his head and walked past me as I died quietly on the floor.

  As usual I had felt the lactic build up gradually during the session until the one rep where I crossed that line and it flooded through me. In those circumstances there is nothing you can do. You can’t feel your legs or your arms. A few of the girls in the group threw up. That happened every session. Their bodies had conditioned them to be sick when they felt the lactic. I hate being sick and never got to that point, so I held it in and came apart instead.

  ‘It’s meant to be hard,’ Chell would say to us. ‘This is the worst it can ever get.’

  He reminded me of that in Götzis. ‘You’ve done the work,’ he told me. ‘It will be painful but not as bad as that.’ As it turned out, he was wrong.

  That night we went to the athletes’ parade in the town. Derry Suter, my soft tissue therapist, came with me. There was a barbecue and the heptathletes all had to run down a path between the crowds, hi-fiving all the kids as we went. The next step of the time-honoured programme that never changes took place in the town hall. Each athlete was called up onto the stage. This was my first time in Götzis but I would come to find that the presenter would say the same thing to me year after year.

  ‘I’m small, too,’ she would begin, ‘but I’ve got my heels on.’

  I smiled and accepted the rose that they gave to each athlete. It was the ancient side of old-fashioned, but not as bad as the time they used to hold a Miss Heptathlete type of beauty pageant before the competition in Desenzano del Garda in Italy. Quite how they got us all to do that I don’t know, but we would parade around the stage there before the judges voted on who was worthiest of this high honour. I won it once but I do not count it among my greatest achievements.

  The trappings of Götzis disguised how important it was, and on Saturday 31 May we all turned up for the start of competition. There was little chat among the competitors. I am quite friendly with Jessica Zelinka, from Canada, and would talk to Hyleas Fountain, the best American, but there is nobody I would call a close friend. I compartmentalize my life and have friends and rivals, business colleagues and family.

  The competition began, as ever, with the 100 metres hurdles, my favourite event, and I did not feel right from the start. For me it was a rubbish time and the vague niggle I had had beforehand was still there. It is easy to panic as an athlete, viewing every little ache or pain into impending doom, but I said to myself, ‘What’s going on?’ Then it got really bad in the high jump.

  The sense of panic was rising now. At first my fear was that I would not be able to get another jump in and I needed the points. Then it grew into a fear of having to pull out of the event and I did not want to do that because I had finished every heptathlon that I had started. It would be some time before these doubts and fears would merge into the deep, dark realization that the entire Olympic dream was in the balance.

  Neil Black, the UK Athletics physio and future performance director, gave me some treatment at the side of the track.

  ‘It feels like the ankle’s blocked,’ I said. ‘Like it needs cracking or pulling or something.’

  Neil manipulated it and it felt looser. I tried a run and stopped quickly.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. The panic was now all-engulfing.

  Still, I went to the shot put and set a personal best. That event allows you to get onto your toes and so it was a different part of the foot I was using. But a PB? Clearly, it did not seem to be anything too serious. And then came the final event of that first day, the 200 metres. I clocked 23.59 seconds. That was a poor time, and in the home straight I felt as though I was going backwards. I struggled to push off my right foot at all, and by the end I was second overall, behind Anna Bogdanova, and I could hardly walk.

  I struggled across the infield with Neil to get my stuff.

  ‘Walk as naturally as you can,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ I replied, but every step hurt. ‘It’s really sore.’

  I went into the physio room under the grey stand and my ankle was encased in ice. Not for one minute did I think the Olympics were in doubt, but I was gutted. I could see training schedules and plans being thrown up in the air. I could see sessions being lost and, for someone who thrives on a plan, it was an awful prospect.

  Chell was being upbeat and said: ‘It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.’

  The press guys came in and did an interview. That was the hardest thing. I just wanted to cry my eyes out, but I didn’t want to be secretive. I was given an old pair of bright yellow crutches that someone had found at the back of the stand and went back to the hotel.

  I put on a brave face. I was sure it was nothing, I said. Chell said it was just a precaution. Dave Collins, the UK Athletics performance director said he hoped people would not go a
ll Chicken Licken and suggest the sky was falling down. He had reason to be concerned, with Paula Radcliffe still on crutches too after being diagnosed with a stress fracture to the femur just two weeks before.

  That night, back at the hotel, it began to sink in how serious this might be and I was distraught. I’d never pulled out of a heptathlon and I was anxious, not knowing what was wrong. I went to my hotel room and cried. My grandparents were over that weekend. There had been a story in one of the papers saying how, when I was young and wavering, my grandad gave me a pound for every personal best. I spoke to him and he said: ‘A pound! It was a fiver. Everyone in the village thinks I’m tight.’ I said, ‘All right, Grandad, I’ve got other things to worry about.’

  Neil sorted me a flight and I flew back early on Sunday. I rang Andy, who was awaiting my call and drove down. I was in floods of tears when I saw him because my mindset had darkened.

  ‘I’m not going to the Olympics, I’m not going to the Olympics.’

  I took a call from Chell who tried to lift my spirits.

  ‘I’m not going to the Olympics, am I?’

  ‘Yes, of course you are, everything’s fine.’

  Neil had told me to get ice on it and try to do some rotating exercises before he picked me up and drove me back to the hospital the next day. I think the potential outcomes were getting more depressing with each person who told me that there was nothing to worry about.

  The MRI scan took forty minutes and the CT one took five. I hobbled from the hospital to the Olympic Medical Institute to see Paul Dijkstra, the UK Athletics doctor, who explained that if there was a lot of white on the scan then that showed the inflamed area. When we looked at the scans it was like snow. There was a lot of white.

  ‘You have a stress fracture in your navicular and a stress fracture in your metatarsal,’ he said. In total I actually had three fractures. I couldn’t believe it.