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

by Jessica Ennis

  Most things were going well. I had some great hurdles sessions and felt confident in that. Hurdling can be scary. The key for me is in bringing your lead leg down before you have actually cleared the hurdle with your trailing leg, thereby reducing your time over the hurdles. That is quite a daunting thing to do because your instinct wants you to clear it comfortably. Get it a fraction out and you will clatter a hurdle and there is a fine line between a fast time and falling. I remembered back to the last Olympics when Lolo Jones, the American, had the gold medal in the bag in the 100 metres hurdles. She was clear and almost home. Almost. Six letters but a huge word. She hit the penultimate hurdle and dropped way back. Her one shot was a blank. I knew my lead leg was a bit straight. It always had been but the sessions were good and I was confident. The same went for the 800 metres. I had a good time-trial in the scorching heat on the Algarve and knew that boded well for the cooler climes of London. Everything was going well. Everything except the cursed long jump.

  I was glad that we were in Portugal. I could imagine how mad everything was going at home and was happy that UKA had decided long ago that we would be basing ourselves out here in relative anonymity, rather than in Aldershot, which had been the original plan and where it would have been far harder to shield us from the hype.

  There had been talk about getting the likes of Cathy Freeman and Michael Johnson, the Australian and American Olympic legends, to talk to us about the pressure of a home Games. I was not too bothered. I respected their achievements, but felt I was on my own path. And, anyway, I was looking forward to a big crowd.

  On the night of the Opening Ceremony, the team gathered in the hotel’s auditorium. It felt like an age since there had been a public debate about how the athletes were being denied the chance to go to the ceremony. I certainly didn’t feel that way. The ceremonies and countdowns were more for the public. The athletes were going to the Olympics to do a job.

  We wore the same garish gold and white tracksuits worn by those athletes who did make the ceremony. We had the BBC on and the presenter said it would only be another forty minutes before Team GB came in, but the athletes’ parade seemed to drag on forever. My parents had gone to the ceremony and Mum texted me. ‘There are a lot of people here,’ she said. That made me laugh. She later said that she was worried because of the noise and thought of me being in front of 80,000 people, but I thrive on pressure and didn’t think that was going to be a problem. Then Jessica Zelinka, one of the other heptathletes who had arrived in London, sent me a message. ‘It’s like a Jessica Ennis theme park,’ she tweeted. I laughed at that, but did begin to think, ‘Oh my God.’

  We had the team speeches while we were in Portugal. Charles van Commenee liked to make jokes, but sometimes they got lost. The theme of his speech was journeys. He looked at Greg Rutherford, the long jumper, and called him ‘the man of glass’ because he said he was always injured. Little did we know what he’d go on to achieve. Then he mentioned many other athletes with positive and slightly negative statements. By the time he labelled Nigel Levine ‘the Joker’, Nicola got the giggles and I had to look down and try to stop going the same way. Nobody else was making a sound. Charles continued, talking of the challenges he faced, even mentioning ‘Fatgate’, but then got interrupted. A mainstay of his speeches was some light-hearted banter directed at the hard-to-decipher Scandinavian accent of Aki Salo, who worked with the relay team. This time Fuzz Ahmed, the RADA-trained coach of high jumper Robbie Grabarz, hijacked the speech and a video of Aki came up on the screen. However, the perfectly clipped vowels of Lawrence Clarke, an Old Etonian hurdler and heir apparent to a baronetcy, had been dubbed over Aki’s words. That brought the house down.

  The 400 metres hurdles world champion, Dai Greene was expected to do very well in London. His captain’s speech was more natural than mine and included a sly dig at me because I kept saying to him, ‘how’s your speech going,’ and winding him up – his praise of the juniors in the team including the suggestion that Kat could give me some long-jump lessons. There was a good atmosphere that night, but the reality was now dawning on us. The Olympics, the goal that had always seemed so far away, was here. This was our time. Would I capture the moment or let it slip?

  I had never competed in London before, not even at Crystal Palace, the UK’s biggest track meet. It was a new experience for me. I was just glad that we had flown to City Airport and not Heathrow, where BA had painted my face over an area the size of fifteen tennis courts in a field. This was a welcome for arriving athletes and was used to boast on Twitter about the menace of #home-advantage. I had thought it was on private land when I was told about the idea, but then I found out it was just a field. I expected a bunch of kids to go out there armed with spray cans and spades. Things had certainly taken a turn for the weird.

  The Olympic Village was an assault on the senses. From the calm and quiet of Portugal, we were plunged into this swirling mass of noise and colour. From the enormous dining hall to the armed police, it was daunting and overwhelming. We went to check our rooms. They were basic but fine, and I was sharing an apartment with a great bunch – Nicola, Goldie Sayers, Lee McConnell, Yammy Aldama, Kate Dennison and Eilidh Child.

  Sometimes it is easy to stay in your bubble and forget what everyone else is going through, but I felt so sorry for Goldie, one of the nicest people you could wish to meet. She had been in great form and had broken the British record at Crystal Palace before flying out to the training camp. However, she had also suffered a serious injury in London. She said she could throw but then the pain was excruciating. She had to give it a go, but she was a victim of the worst possible timing. I was gutted for her.

  Phillips Idowu was another who was struggling with injury. He had been the world champion in the triple jump in 2009 and had a habit of producing his best on the biggest stage. However, he had decided to stay in London and receive treatment there rather than fly out to Portugal. It became a story, fuelled by the fact he did not see eye to eye with Charles. In London people began to speculate whether he would turn up or not. Charles even called him ‘the invisible man’, but I just thought it was really sad because he obviously had an injury and was trying to deal with it the best way he could. Like Goldie, it would be awful for him that he just did not have enough time to get it right.

  For the main part, though, I was taking in the new surroundings. We had barely dumped our bags when Nicola spied Prince William and Kate Middleton coming into the village. We dropped our bags, ran down the stairs and strategically positioned ourselves where they could not miss us.

  ‘Oh, hi Jess,’ said William.

  I thought, this is getting weirder still. Then Kate asked us about the village before Prince Harry piped up.

  ‘Not much pressure on you, then.’

  The dining hall was so big that you would always look for someone else to go with. It was like being back at school again, a scrawny child standing with a tray in the canteen trying to find a friendly face to sit with. The rooms were basic but good, somewhere, I imagine, between prison and halls of residence, but I would hardly be there because I was always one of the first to leave and last back. Usually, I am quite conscientious and tiptoe around if I am sharing. This time I was glad to have my own room. The only thing that was disconcerting was when I had a quick look on Twitter and a found a twenty-year-old boy, who was on the cleaning staff, had declared excitably that he had just been in Jessica Ennis’s room. That freaked me out a bit.

  The next day I visited the stadium. I wanted to know where the combined events room was and the route from the warm-up track into the stadium. Then it was up to the Main Press Centre, a huge building on the edge of the Olympic Park where the world’s media were based, and I joined Dai, Greg Rutherford, and Charles at the Team GB press conference.

  The park was packed. People were dressed in Union Jack outfits and the purple-vested volunteers were merrily helping everyone on their way. I went back to the apartment and watched some of the other events. It w
as Wednesday 1 August. I tried to put the long jump out of my mind and clung to the fact that I had managed to have one better session before I left Portugal. It was still there, though, in the back of my mind.

  The next day was 2 August, the eve of competition. I did my usual routine, withdrew into myself a bit and went over everything with Chell. My mum sent me her usual text.

  ‘Don’t let those big girls push you around.’

  It was sixteen years since I had turned up to the Don Valley Stadium because my mum was a firm believer in tiring out kids, four years since I had been in the deepest depression over Beijing, but I did not allow myself to get emotional. I went over every event six times in my head, how I wanted them to pan out. From my balcony I could see the Olympic Stadium, lit up and softening the darkness. Tomorrow morning I would be there for the hurdles. I lay in bed and pictured perfect technique. My mind wandered and I fell, so I tried again. When I had cleared all the obstacles a few times I drifted off to sleep.

  13

  EIGHTY THOUSAND FRIENDS

  The alarm clock rang at 5.50 a.m. I got up and went to the dining hall. Even at that time there were a lot of people there. I had some Granola cereal, coffee and some juice. Most of Team Ennis were there too. I could sense the nerves. Doc went and got a cinnamon swirl. As he came back, Derry said: ‘Oh, I think I’ll have one too.’ So Doc went back for another. As he came back with it, someone else piped up and asked Doc to get them one. It was silly but I laughed. It was a temporary release from the stranglehold of tension.

  We took the bus down to the warm-up track. There were tents around it for each team. I lay on the physio’s couch and listened to some music on my iPod. Normally, I am twitchy and feel a mounting sense of anxiety, but this time I felt a strange calmness flowing over me. I thought, ‘That’s weird.’

  To get to the stadium from the warm-up track you had to walk through a long tented tunnel. The eight women in my hurdles heat were led along it one by one. Two places in front of me was Chernova, tall and thin and ready. We emerged from the tunnel in the bowels of the stadium and went into the call room. Our bags and spikes were checked. There was a TV on in the room showing the other heats. Kat was in the one before mine. I saw her on the TV and her face widened with a huge grin when her name was read out. I noticed for the first time that there seemed to be a lot of people in the stadium.

  Then it was our turn. They called us up and we walked out through a tunnel and up into the light. For the first time I realized how big and frightening the Olympics are. I glanced around and was amazed that the stadium was full. Even though I knew they had sold the tickets, I’d never been to a championship where the morning session was heaving with people and expectation like this. By now I was really nervous.

  We lined up. I am always very deadpan on the line before the hurdles because this is where it can all start to go wrong. I did not even hear them call my name, I didn’t know when to wave, but I sensed it. The adrenaline was huge but the crowd gave me confidence. One shot. Suddenly, all the nerves dropped and, then, I was ready to go.

  I didn’t think negative things. Dos not don’ts. I was in lane eight with Hyleas Fountain outside me in nine. That was good because she was a fine hurdler, but Jessica Zelinka, another strong athlete in the event, was over the other side of the track on the inside. I had been annoyed by that because she is a 12.68 runner and you want to be close to the fast girls. We crouched and the roar dropped to total silence. It was that special moment of bated breath and possibility. Then the gun went. I did not get out particularly well, but the pick-up was good and it flowed. It was a blur but I crossed the line and that was when I heard the crowd again; before it had been as if everything was suspended. I did not know if I had won because I could not see Jessica Zelinka. I clocked the time on the scoreboard as I went past, but I was not about to celebrate prematurely. I had done that in Istanbul and was not going to make the same mistake. Then the time and my name did come up on the board, high above the flaming cauldron.

  12.54 seconds

  I could not believe it. I put both hands in the air. It was a British record and the fastest anyone had ever done in a heptathlon. Later someone would tell me that the time would have given me the gold medal in the hurdles at the 2008 Olympics. It was beyond my expectations and I was numb.

  It meant that after one event I was in the lead, with Zelinka second, Hyleas Fountain third and Chernova and Dobrynska fifteenth and twenty-second respectively. That could all change, of course. There are so many ways for fate to turn against you in the heptathlon, but I was off to a wonderful start.

  There was very little time between the hurdles and the high jump. I could not afford to remain on that bouncy high and so I composed myself. I’d achieved one thing, now for the next task. It was the same in the Olympic Stadium as it had been in nursery, tearing from one activity to the next, never satisfied, always craving more.

  Normally, we take everything with us when we leave the combined events room for the hurdles. This time the officials told us that they would bring all our gear out to us for the high jump. However, when we got to the high-jump area, there was no kit for any of the girls in that last hurdles heat. That caused a problem because the warm-up clock was already ticking down. We watched in frustration as girls from other hurdles heats took jump after jump, while we hung around awaiting the arrival of our stuff. Tempers flared because half of us had no jumping spikes and we could not mark out our run-ups. I went up to an official.

  ‘Where are our bags?’

  ‘They’re coming,’ one said.

  It was way beyond a joke. It was getting close to the start time for the high jump and there was a bunch of unsettled athletes. Hyleas was particularly annoyed. A few of us decided it would be quicker if we went back to the combined events room and got the bags ourselves, so we trotted off only to be told they were now on their way and someone was walking them out, around the entire perimeter of the track.

  Hyleas had had enough. She decided it was time to protest, so a few girls went and sat on the high-jump mat to prevent the other girls from taking their practices. It was not what anyone needed in an Olympic final, but there was a sense of injustice out there in the morning sun. Finally, the bags arrived and the officials extended the warm-up time, but not before we’d been through an emotional wringer.

  We stepped out our marks – a start mark and a brake mark – and put tape down on the track. I am always careful about mine. Sometimes girls run over them and they get ripped up, but I’ve never seen anyone deliberately remove someone else’s. My high jump was nowhere near where it was at its peak. After Daegu, Kat’s coach, Mike Holmes – a top British high jump coach who had worked with former British number one Steve Smith – had done a session with us. He watched the video of me, turned to Chell and said: ‘At least she put her number on the right way round.’ I was terrified of him and he had a way of dragging me down to earth. I’d do a session, look at him and he would just shake his head and say, ‘No.’ I had tried hard to get back to my 2007 level, but I had lower expectations now. In London the weather turned on me too. There was a huge downpour in the middle of the event and, even though I knew the spikes would keep me safe, it inevitably made me a bit more tentative running the curve. I had one failure at 1.80 metres but got over 1.83 metres at the first attempt. By that stage Chernova had fallen by the wayside, bombing out at 1.80 metres. I don’t do sums in my head and I don’t know everyone’s PBs, but I knew Chernova was off her world title pace. I needed another clearance though. Anything less than 1.86 metres would be a disaster, in my reckoning. I failed on the first two attempts. The crowd groaned as one. Dobrynska bowed out at 1.83 metres. It was a chance. My last chance. I thought about all the times I had pulled it out on the final attempt. ‘This is what makes a champion,’ I told myself.

  The track had dried out quickly and I attacked. Run the curve and lean. I remember that moment when you stop climbing, just before you fall, that lovely plateau. Then I remember
hitting the mat and I bounced up. The bar had stayed put. I smiled my relief. I was up in my hurdles and average in my high jump so I was in a good place. I left the track after two events and was collared by Phil Jones from the BBC. ‘Speechless,’ I told him when he asked me about the hurdles, but I found a few words anyway. ‘I cannot believe I ran that time.’ And the high jump? ‘I am disappointed I did not get an extra height, but it’s roughly where I was in Götzis.’

  The shot put was in the evening session and so I went back to the combined events room. Most of the girls went back to the village, but Kat and I stayed. She was up to third place and was loving every minute of it. For me it was harder. Kat was going to enjoy the experience, knowing that her time was probably going to be in Rio in another four years, but for me this was it. This was my time. We were at different ends of the scale.

  I was in a good lead and, significantly, Dobrynska was only twelfth and Chernova sixteenth. I was 218 points ahead of Chernova, although I knew she could get that back in the javelin and long jump. I was not thinking that far ahead, though. All that bothered me now was the shot put. The time passed slowly. One group of 80,000 people left the stadium after the morning session and another 80,000 packed in for the evening. Such a mass of humanity. I did not ring anyone in those interim hours. It was about recovering and preparing for the next task.

  On the warm-up track New Zealand’s champion shot putter Valerie Adams was practising next to me. She is a huge woman and immensely powerful. She said hello and then started doing amazing overhead throws. I suddenly felt very small again, my red, white and blue kit replaced by the red swimming costume of a nervous schoolgirl, and I felt her watching my technique. But I was confident in the shot. I had improved hugely and shown that size is not everything. Valerie would actually end up with a silver medal from London, but would finally get the gold weeks after her final because the winner, Belorussia’s Nadzeya Ostapchuk, failed a dope test. Her coach claimed he had spiked her food with steroids and so she escaped with a one-year ban, but how sad that Valerie would not get to hear her anthem in the stadium.