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

by Jessica Ennis

  My own shot was solid. I opened with 13.85 metres and improved it to 14.28 metres on my second attempt. The third was the worst of the lot. In my head, anything over 14 metres is not a calamity, although I had been throwing so well in Portugal that I half expected to get close to 15 metres, but it was good enough and I could not fail to notice how the others were struggling. Dobrynska almost had a disaster with two fouls before saving her Olympic defence with a final effort of 15.05 metres, while Chernova threw 14.17 metres, only equalling her mark from the World Championships. I felt confident as I headed into the 200 metres, the final event of the first day.

  This was where all the toil was meant to pay off. Training was meant to be harder. That’s what Chell said. That’s why we did all those 300 metre reps in training. We did it so that, in those last 50 metres, when you are dying, you can hold it together.

  ‘Technique,’ Chell would shout on those endless days in the Don Valley. ‘Think about your running style.’ Most of the time I didn’t care about my running style because I just wanted to cross that line, but I had been forced to think about it because it’s in those last yards when things fall apart.

  Again I was in the last heat. Chernova was there too, along with Holland’s Dafne Schippers, a real speed merchant who had clocked 22.69 seconds at the World Championships and who would be running in the individual 200 metres in London.

  I am always nervous before the 200 metres because it feels such a long way. Beforehand we had been in the combined events room. Kat was smiling and thrilled. ‘I can’t wait,’ she said. ‘I’m so excited.’ She was on her phone playing games in between the sessions, loving every minute and rightly so. Once again I reflected that for me, this was it.

  I knew from the hurdles that the track was fast. The temperature had dropped and there was some wind swirling around, but it was a good race. Dafne was in the inside lane and I was in the outside one. I thought we could have a great battle. It proved just that. She was ahead and seemed to have it all tied up with 30 metres left, but all those sessions with Chell, working on mechanics and not losing energy through bad technique, paid off. I crossed the line in 22.83 seconds, a lifetime best. Dafne was given the win even though we clocked the same time. After day one I had 4158 points. That was a lead of 184 from Austra Skujyte, with Jessica Zelinka third. Chernova was 309 points adrift, double the deficit she made up in Daegu, and Dobrynska was 323 behind. It was my best first day by 34 points and some 45 up on the total I’d posted in Götzis when I’d broken the British record in May. The numbers added up. I felt I was on my way.

  I went through the press mixed zone. Chell wanted to get me through as quickly as possible because he wanted to get me checked over by Ali and Derry. My warm-down was a power-walk through the tunnel to the warm-up track. There were lots of smiles.

  ‘You’re in great shape, Jess,’ Ali said.

  Derry took over with his magic hands and gave me a flush-through and an ice massage. ‘You’re doing great.’

  We had some dinner with Kat. An American athlete came over and asked for a picture.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re amazing,’ he said.

  Then he turned to Kat. ‘And your name is hilarious.’

  It seemed a random thing to say and clearly he had not much experience of double-barrelled names. I rang Andy but the phone died. I texted Mum at close to midnight, saying I was sorry I had not got to speak to her.

  The heptathlon wipes you – the adrenaline, the effort, the pain, the concentration and even the hours. Normally, I’d go to bed at home around 10 p.m. but the days of competition are long and exacting. And now I was facing the longest day of my life.

  I tried not to fill my head with too much doubt, but by the time I’d got back to my room, after having treatment, an ice massage, and food, it was midnight. Normally I switch off quickly, but I still couldn’t sleep. My legs were restless and I lay there tossing and turning. It was such a huge moment. Everything was on it and it was so different to anything else I’d ever done. I didn’t go out to the balcony and look at the stadium, and I didn’t want to look back either. My mind and muscles were twitching and I remember waking myself up by kicking out at the wall. I don’t know what Kate Dennison in the next-door room must have thought was going on.

  I woke up at 6 a.m. and felt totally drained. It was emotional. I felt very tired due to the lack of sleep, and thought it was not great to be feeling this way with what lay ahead. I went to get some fresh air and have breakfast. I needed coffee. So did the two figures that I saw in the dining hall, bags packed. They had finished competing and had clearly been out the night before. It showed how everyone was living to different schedules. They were stumbling around after a finishing a night of drinking, while I awaited the most serious moments of my life.

  I still knew I could mess it up. Of course I did. I knew there was so much that could go wrong, especially when the first event of the day was the long jump. The lead over Chernova was big, but she had a best of over 6.80 metres in the long jump. If she matched that and I jumped around 6.10 metres then she would claw back more than 200 points. If we both matched our bests in the javelin she would then take another 150 points off me. It did not take a stretch of the imagination to believe that she could comfortably overhaul me.

  Chell was good in these circumstances. He was calm, but sometimes he says things that get me riled.

  ‘You have 80,000 friends out there,’ he told me before every event. I knew it was a cheesy ritual for him, but it worked too. When you are in that stressful situation, it’s anything that gets you through, for both of us.

  It could all be undone in the long jump and I struggled in the warm-up. I was a bit over the board, which is a foul, and so I discussed it with Chell. He said I should move my run-up back at bit. One more shoe. I actually moved it a couple of extra feet without him knowing. In all it went back seven feet, a huge amount on the day of an Olympic final. It was a massive gamble. You have to listen to your coach but you also have to listen to yourself. Chernova’s first jump was 6.44 metres and mine was an abject 5.95 metres. The points difference between those two was 140 points. I was a third of the way to the nightmare scenario. I was panicking. I was glad not to have got a no-jump, but I was fixating on the runway. Now I needed to really jump. I went to see Chell who came down to the front row of the stand. That was hard because I was trying to have a shouted in-depth discussion with my coach, while hordes of people next to him were shouting: ‘Jess, Jess, Jess.’ I was trying to block out all the people taking pictures because I knew my whole world could fall apart in the next few minutes and all those pictures would be deleted.

  Mum, Dad, Mel and Andy were in the stadium. As it turned out their seats were in my long-jump eye line. Unbeknown to me they moved somewhere else because they knew they would distract me. I would smile at them and they didn’t want that, so they moved and found somewhere to watch in anonymity. I was so glad they did.

  Chernova improved to 6.54 metres with her second jump. Then it was my time. I ran freely, hit the board and hung. The days, months and even years of agony in the long jump, rebuilding the event after breaking my ankle and all of 2012’s traumas, came down to these few seconds. I reached, landed and bounced up. It looked good, but I waited, expectantly but tentatively.

  6.40 metres

  I had ticked it off. More than anything I had averted a calamity. Maybe it got to Chernova because she could not improve on her last jump, whereas I, with the comfort of knowing I was in the box seat, increased mine to 6.48 metres. A crucial event that could have wrecked my dream was done and dusted.

  There were two events left. The javelin, the reason I’d lost the world title in Daegu, and the 800 metres, the most painful event of all. I knew the javelin was not a major problem. Some people had hyped it up into being a real issue, but I believed Daegu was a one-off. I had been consistent all year and felt confident. I never doubted Mick. I knew that he was the man who was capable of me getting there. I felt I needed a personal
best, and when I threw 46.61 metres with my first attempt I felt emotional. There was a sudden sensation that I was almost home, but I quashed it as quickly as it came.

  Then I increased my distance to 47.49 metres, the personal best I craved and needed. Chernova, despite throwing more than 54 metres in the past, could not match it. Dobrynska had already gone, three no-jumps in the long jump convincing her to quit. She was one of five women who had started the competition to have pulled out, testament to the fact the heptathlon is gruelling and saps both mind and body, leaving you physically screaming with hurt whether it goes well or not.

  I was 188 points clear of Skujyte. Chernova was sixth. Kat was now nineteenth but still relishing every moment. For me it was not enjoyable. I could not enjoy it for more than a few fleeting nanoseconds with so much at stake. People say the journey should be as satisfying as the destination, but it wasn’t. I came off the track after the javelin and I was fighting back the tears because I knew I was so close to the end. The team were there and they were relaxed. Mick kept saying, ‘You’re going to do it’, which had been like a mantra throughout. Chell was relaxed and chatting away but I could sense his excitement. Mike Holmes, Kat’s coach, was there too.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ I told them. ‘It’s not over.’

  Mick listened, ignored me and broke out into a big smile.

  ‘Yeah, but how are we going to celebrate?’

  I asked Chell if he could work it out. He rolled his eyes.

  ‘Seriously? You’re going to make me work out all the figures.’

  ‘Yes. I need to know.’

  So he did.

  The gaps were huge. I could finish fifteen seconds behind Skujyte and win. I had twenty seconds over Lyudmyla Yosypenko in third and, significantly, twenty-five seconds on Chernova. The figures were music to my ears and confidence oozed through me.

  ‘Do you want me to keep going?’ Chell asked.

  The 800 metres was scheduled to start at 8.35 p.m. but I was going to be in the last heat, sandwiched between the long-jump and 10,000 metres finals. It was a long wait because I wanted to run the race now. Get it over with. Kill the pressure. The television set in the combined events room switched to the studio where Denise Lewis and Michael Johnson began discussing me. I put my fingers in my ears and ran out of the room. I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. ‘Tell me afterwards,’ I thought.

  I went to the warm-up track and saw Mo preparing for the 10,000 metres. Mo had taken a different path to me. Born in Somalia, raised in Djibouti and now living in America, where he was trained by a Cuban-born coach, he had travelled the world to get to London. I had stayed in Sheffield with the coach I had had since junior school. Different paths to the same goal. I wished him well and he did the same.

  I watched Dai Greene’s 400 metres hurdles semi-final on the television. He struggled home in fourth place but just got through into the final. He looked devastated and it showed how sometimes things do not quite go as you have imagined for months on end. The clock ticked. There were other heptathletes warming up and trying to get their bodies to hold together for one last act. Then we were led through the tunnel into the stadium once more. I was in the last heat along with the other top-ranked girls. This heat featured the athletes lying in the top positions after six events, so would decide the medal places. Chernova towered over me as we were led away. She was in lane three and I was in four.

  We were led along the side of the track to the start. The girls from the last heat had just finished and were dying on the red floor. It was not a nice feeling to have to step over people, as they were scraped off the track, to get to your lane. It filled me with pure fear.

  This is it. I want to get to the front and I am going to go out a bit too hard just to stay out of trouble. I don’t want to be tripped or spiked or elbowed by ‘those big girls’. I am really close to it now. I can almost taste it, and yet it also seems so far, far away. I don’t look around, or think about the journey. I don’t think about the flames of the Sheffield steelworks, or the orange fire away to my right. I banish all emotion and think about forging a triumph here and now.

  The gun. Accelerate. Faster. Flashbulbs. A dull roar. I hit the front.

  My plan is to get through the first lap in sixty-one seconds. I can hear the noise from the crowd. It is sending shudders through me yet I feel comfortable. The bell sounds. One lap. Little more than one minute to complete a sixteen-year race. I don’t want to push too hard because I don’t want to blow up. On the back straight Lilli Schwarzkopf overhauls me. She edges in front and then Chernova also comes past. I can feel Jessica Zelinka closing too as we round the last bend. I think, ‘I’ve run harder than this in training.’ I push through the lactic. I have no choice but to run wide as we come into the home straight to get past. It’s my only way past Schwarzkopf and Chernova. Tactically it is not great, but you have to find a way.

  As I move forwards I hear the crowd erupt. I feel I am being carried along. Close now. It is just another home straight but it is a foreign and alien one. Then I think back to Götzis when Chernova beat me in the 800 metres. Then she said that she knew I’d won but at least she had beaten me in the 800. It was a badge of honour. I thought fleetingly of Daegu and the photograph of her finishing the 800 metres there and celebrating as my face dropped. I had thought about that picture many times in the past year. I am not going to let her have the last bit of glory. There are no consolation prizes. I want to put on a show and thank the crowd for their support. I want it to be a great finish to the two days and I want that feeling of crossing the line first. So I run and run and I win. I am the Olympic champion.

  14

  AFTERMATH

  I don’t remember putting my arms out in a wide, Y-shaped victory salute. I never celebrate like that. I rarely celebrate at all because I feel too reserved. I fell to the floor and the tears came. You will be aware by now that I cry a lot, but rarely in public. However, this time the floodgates opened and the relief just poured out of me. The cameras clicked and then I sat up and took the congratulations of some of the other girls. I had won my heat in 2 minutes 8.65 seconds. Jessica Zelinka had come through into second place. The scoreboard said Lilli had been disqualified but I was oblivious to that. I went to find Chell. He tried to get down from the stand to embrace me. I held out a hand across the gap to him but we couldn’t quite reach each other. He shrugged. Derry threw a big Union Jack flag at me that had ‘Jessica Ennis – Olympic champion’ printed on it. That amazed me. Later I told him: ‘You must have had some faith in me to have that made.’ He said: ‘Don’t worry, if you’d lost you’d never have known about it.’

  As usual we all went on our lap of honour together. We held hands and bowed to the crowd on the back straight. Mum and Dad had rushed down to the side of the track on the home straight but I didn’t see them. I was unaware at that point that what people would call the greatest night in British athletics – some would even say in British sport – was unfolding. I won at 9.04 p.m. Greg won the long jump at 9.26 p.m., by which time Mo was a few laps into the 10,000 metres final. When he won in the most dramatic fashion we had three gold medals in less than 45 minutes. Given that we had only won one gold medal in Beijing, it was an incredible gold rush.

  I came off the track and Phil Jones was there as usual for the BBC. He grabbed me and, when he mentioned the journey I had been on since Beijing, the tears came again. I edged away, rubbed my eyes and tried to compose myself, but I had never experienced emotions quite like it. I found it hard to stop.

  Then, as I was coming through the mixed zone, an official who had a finger in one ear and an earpiece on stopped me. He was listening to a message.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Jessica,’ he said. ‘There’s been a protest.’

  My heart dropped like a stone. I thought, ‘Oh my God, that would be just typical, wouldn’t it?’

  I asked him what it was about. He listened a bit more. I thought: I’ve celebrated too early again. This would be the
ultimate kick in the teeth if they took it away from me now. I’d even done a lap of honour this time. They were awful, never-ending seconds.

  ‘It’s about stepping out of lane,’ he said.

  I thought, I definitely haven’t done that.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ he said, and I broke out into another smile, the relief heaped on relief. It turned out that the Germans had appealed after Lilli Schwarzkopf had been disqualified. She was reinstated because it emerged that the officials had made a mistake and confused her with the Ukrainian in the next lane. Ukraine appealed. In the end it meant that I won with a new British record, 6955 points.

  Lilli was second, 306 points behind. Chernova was third. I had beaten her by a huge distance.

  Finally, I made it to the combined events room and the team were there. I had never seen Chell so excited. This time he gave me a proper bear hug. There was no awkwardness or embarrassed pat. It was a hug of ‘I can’t breathe’ proportions. We had done it.

  The medal ceremony was that night. You sit in a room with the medallists, waiting your turn. Seb Coe came in and said hello. He had presented me with my silver medal in Daegu. Back then he told me he was going to put his name down to present the heptathlon medals in London which ‘you will win’. He too comes from Sheffield – he had great belief in me and he had done so much to make the Olympics happen that it seemed fitting.

  Sometimes the stadiums empty before the ceremonies, or they are held so early or late that nobody is there. This time the place was full. I saw Andy and wondered why he had sunglasses on and then realized how emotional it was for him too. As we were led out I could hear David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ being played over the tannoy and I felt myself welling up again. I walked out and Carmel was leaning over the side of the tunnel, tears in her eyes, screaming, ‘Yeahhhh.’ I had always felt that it would be a really hard battle, that things would go wrong and that there would be the ultimate disappointment, so I could not believe that it had all gone to plan. That was the sensation as the National Anthem played, I crumbled again and the crowd sang along. It all seemed totally unbelievable to me.