Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold (15 page)

My shot put was good. I finished with 14.79 metres, a personal best that suggested Chell might have been right when he said I could top 15 metres, but Dobrynska led the way with a huge 16.51 metres. It meant that, after three out of five events, I led Lithuania’s Austra Skujyte by just 10 points with Dobrynska another 19 adrift.

And then I crumbled in the long jump. My best was a mere 6.19 metres, while Dobrynska did a season’s best of 6.57 metres. Suddenly Dobrynska was 93 points ahead of me. Skujyte was up to second. If I had felt invincible a year ago, I didn’t now.

It left me with another 800 metres where I knew I had to run incredibly to win. I needed to put six seconds on Dobrynska. I gave it everything and won the race. As I came over the line I saw the scoreboard flash up my name and points tally of 4965. The letters ‘CR’ indicating a championship record were next to it. I broke out into a smile. I’d won! I did not see Chell in the crowd at that point, shouting, ‘No, no, no.’ In the emotional aftermath of the competition, mentally and physically drained, it did not occur to me that the indoor track was small and Dobrynska had not been that far behind. Then her name flashed up ahead of mine. The score of 5013 points was a world record. It suddenly clicked that they were amending the scores with each name flashed up. So it was silver again, and this time it was even worse than Daegu. To have been lifted so high and then dropped so quickly was awful. The emotions were intensified. It was a horrible moment.

I did not begrudge Dobrynska. To win with a world record was truly special. I also knew what a tough time she was having with her husband so ill. She’s a nice woman and I congratulated her, but I felt horrible. It was tough to sit in doping, with her behind me in the queue, red-eyed and fighting my emotions.

Andy dragged me out for a drink that night. Then I got an abrupt message from Chell to get back to the hotel because I needed treatment. I was not feeling great and would have preferred just to have some time away with Andy, but I went back in a taxi. Andy did his best to comfort me.

‘You are a consistent winner of medals,’ he told me on that journey through the crowded streets. ‘If you have a bad day it’s a silver medal. That’s not a bad place to be.’

It actually cheered me up. The whole thing of thinking I’d won and having it taken away from me hurt like hell, but Andy had a way of saying the right things.

I had lost two world titles in little more than six months. Dobrynska now looked to be the Olympic favourite and clearly had a knack of getting herself into the perfect shape for competition. Chernova had had a bad time at the World Indoors but I expected her to be back too. There were others who might sneak into the equation too. It was getting harder by the day. In Daegu my javelin had let me down. In Istanbul my long jump had. I needed to sort them both out or I was going to get nothing in London.

It is easy to get paranoid as an athlete, and the nearer you get to competitions, the worse that can get. We are always told to be ultra-careful about our health. In the build-up to the Olympics the message was ‘germs cost medals’. Nobody was shaking hands in case they picked up something. Everyone was using anti-bacterial sprays. It may sound obsessive, but the Olympics are an obsession.

It meant I was not best pleased when Andy’s brother, Matt, knocked on the door one day close to the Games. I went to give him a kiss and he backed away.

‘Don’t come near me,’ he said. ‘I’m full of cold.’

I was a bit incredulous. ‘Matt, why did you come here, then?’

We went out for a meal but I stayed down the other end of the table. Afterwards I was quite stroppy and did ask Andy why Matt had visited if he was ill. And then I did get a cold and Matt posted a message from a safe distance on Facebook saying that he hoped he had not ruined Jessica’s Olympic dream. He’d meant no harm, but Olympic planning is all about the small details.

I was stewing even more at my next race. It was May, and I was back at the Great City Games, where I was running 100 metres hurdles in Manchester city centre. It was a true test for me because I was up against Dawn Harper, the reigning Olympic champion at the event, and Danielle Carruthers, the runner-up at the World Championships in Daegu.

I had been suffering a bit with a cold but I ran well. It was one of those days when it felt effortless. I beat them all to the line and the time, a new best of 12.75 seconds, flashed up. I was ecstatic. But again, just like in Istanbul, it was short-lived. It was my old rival, Kelly Sotherton, watching on television, who alerted people to the fact something was awry.

‘Thought 100m hurdles was great but I’m sure there were only nine hurdles not ten,’ she tweeted. She was right. The organizers had only put out nine hurdles and so any times and records did not count in the official stats. It was a silly mistake and an unbelievable one. I was genuinely angry afterwards and let my frustration show in the interviews I gave afterwards. ‘I feel let down,’ I said. ‘It felt like it was a good race, I was running well, I was obviously coming through at the end, stick another hurdle on there and it would have been the same outcome but, argh, I’m so annoyed.’

People wondered how we had not realized we were a hurdle short, but you don’t count when you are running. I thought it seemed a long run to the end, but you are so in the moment that you do not see the bigger picture. ‘I can’t believe that,’ I continued. ‘It’s a great event but that’s a massive, massive mess-up. As an athlete you expect that everything should be set up properly and there should be no mistakes like that.’

Kelly, who was still hoping to make the team in London in the heptathlon, tweeted again when she realized it was becoming a story. ‘I feel bad! People probably think I’m being a cow bag!’

The organizers, Nova International, issued an apology. I understood people get things wrong, but it was a pretty basic mistake and I wanted everything to be right this year. Already I had lost in Istanbul and I needed things to start clicking into place.

Chell said he had never seen me like that before. I don’t like conflict but it got to me. I think the pressure of the whole year got to me. I was upset and mad. Andy drove me home and I rang my mum to talk it through. I was already getting tetchy and tense ahead of Götzis the following week and Andy was already walking on eggshells around me, but I hadn’t gone to Manchester to have fun. It’s never ever just fun for me. Even a throwing event in Barnsley is deadly serious. Chell rang and was adamant he needed to speak to me, but I didn’t have time for him. He couldn’t understand why I was so annoyed. The next day Andy Caine, from the organizers, rang me up. He apologized but by that time I had softened and said: ‘Oh, it’s fine, just one of those things.’ They sent flowers too. I love the event and have never slagged it off, but it was an almighty cock-up. I just wanted things to go smoothly for once. So we flew out a few days later to the Hypo-Meeting in Götzis for what was a huge meeting, the final heptathlon before the Olympics, and that was when Fatgate broke and things got even stranger.

T
he headline in the
Guardian
read:

Jessica Ennis coach hits out at UK Athletics for labelling her ‘fat’.

It was Friday 25 May, the day before the heptathlon started in Götzis. The gist of the story was that Chell reportedly said a ‘high-ranking coach’ within our sport – he refused to say who – had suggested ‘that she’s out of condition and she’s got too much weight’.

It quickly became a big story about me being accused of being fat, with lots of people wading in and saying how ridiculous it was. Eating disorder groups were rung up and said this sort of story did not help their cause. And, of course, the media wanted to know who it was who had said the words in question.

It was irritating because it was another distraction. Olympic year threw up lots of different challenges and, in any other year, issues like this would not have gained anything like the same attention. Chell had been annoyed that the person in question had suggested I might be carrying too much weight as he is very sensitive about the impact of discussing weight issues with athletes, particularly female athletes. Neither of us expected the story to be printed on the eve of competition. Suddenly ‘Fatgate’, as some dubbed it, was big news.

I was not bothered about the stories personally. I was happy with how I was performing and was happy with my body so I felt secure in myself. I let it wash over me – I didn’t want to make the story any bigger. However, it did make me think about the messages that the story was sending out to kids. They probably looked at me and thought I was really skinny, so to hear that people might regard me as fat could create issues, not for me but for other people. That did bother me because it is important.

The words and meaning ended up twisted, but once it came out I knew what it was referring to. As an athlete you look at your body in a very different way to a ‘normal person’. It’s all about muscle and fat ratio, so I think the remarks were more in that athletic context. It was not a general ‘you’re fat’ remark. But it did go out of control for a few days and I do think you have to be careful and sensitive when talking about people’s weight, in whatever context it might be. If I had not been performing well then that would have knocked me and maybe I would have thought, ‘Yeah, maybe I am a bit heavy’. That would have got me really down, but I was in a happy state at the time of Götzis.

Chell was being defensive but there was no need. Götzis showed that. It was one event that went like a dream. I was fast in the hurdles, average in the high jump and then everything just clicked. It was seamless, the 14.51 metres in the shot put connected to a 22.88 personal best in the 200 metres. It was a delicious domino effect and, by the time I had equalled my personal best of 6.51 metres in the long jump, I was 251 points clear of Chernova and 415 ahead of Dobrynska. The latter’s poor form was understandable. In the interim between Istanbul and Götzis, Dobrynska’s husband had lost his battle against cancer. It put things in perspective and made me realize just how astonishing her performance had been in Turkey. While the stories about my weight were raging on that sunny Friday morning, I went over to her and said how sorry I was. Sometimes, in the blinkered world of sport, it is easy to lose sight of the truly weighty matters.

I was on a high, though, as I threw the javelin 47.11 metres, a personal best and a pointed message to all those people who had suggested I couldn’t throw after Daegu. I realized that finally Denise Lewis’s record was there for the taking. I also did the calculations with Chell and knew that a time of 2 minutes 9 seconds in the 800 metres would break the 6900 points barrier, something only seven women had ever done.

I ran the 800 metres perfectly in terms of the time. I won the competition and added 75 points to Denise’s record. Yet Chernova had done everything in her power to pass me in the last few yards of the last event, our final duel before London. It did not affect the scores, but it obviously gave her some confidence. As I spoke to reporters on the infield she was doing the same. ‘It was a great personal best,’ Chernova said of my efforts. ‘But in the next competition it will be, “Can she beat that record? Can she get the same points or not?” I know what I can do and I will work towards that. I’m not afraid of anything. If people just look at one girl, it will be very hard for her to compete. I’m very popular in my country and my country is bigger than Great Britain.’

I didn’t care what she said. There were two months to go and, whatever anyone might have thought, I was in the shape of my life.

As a multi-eventer it is not often that you get invited to Diamond League events, the big, glamour nights where the best athletes in the world get to compete. I had run in New York before, but the chance to hurdle at the world-famous Bislett Stadium in Oslo in June was perfect for me.

I love hurdling. I always have done. And in Oslo I would be up against Sally Pearson, the Australian who had taken the event by storm. She looked odds-on to upgrade her silver medal from Beijing and was the reigning world champion, indoors and out. Also in the field were the likes of Tiffany Porter and Lolo Jones. I felt confident. Not for one moment did I think I would beat Sally, but I felt I could beat my lifetime best. Then, with the sun bathing the famous old stadium in evening light, and Usain Bolt limbering up for his 100 metres, I jumped the gun. I stood impassively in my lane, trying to disbelieve the reality, but was then shown a red card. I was disqualified. Now I knew how stupid Bolt must have felt the year before at the World Championships. I walked back under the stand and felt crushed. I had wanted to show that multi-eventers are not merely average at everything. I wanted to show I could compete against the best. But instead I had blown it and it was another thing in the back of my head going into the Olympics, another seed of doubt planted.

I had got all my media and sponsor commitments out of the way beforehand. There had been talk in the media about how much I was now earning. Some of the figures were way off, but I was making a good living now and had forged long-term relationships with a number of companies – Adidas, Jaguar, Olay, Powerade, BP, British Airways, Aviva and Omega. The bigger profile helped enormously in some ways.

That was certainly the case with my shoes. My first spikes had been the hand-me-down shoes from Chell’s ex-wife, Nicola. At the time I felt special to have spikes rather than my normal trainers, but as you get more serious you need different shoes for different events. The shot-put shoes are smoother to match the surface of the circle, the high-jump ones have more grip on the heel and the hurdles ones are lighter and put you on your toes. After winning the world title, I was at a level where Adidas would talk to me about my specific requirements. Mark Dannhauser from the athletes’ services department came over from Germany to watch me train and talk to me about the shoes they were making. In 2011 they had a long-jump shoe that had a zip on them. I said I didn’t think the zip was needed and just created more bulk, so they got rid of it and went with laces. It was great to have that input and I think they valued my opinion; obviously because I am a heptathlete, I have to wear more shoes than most.