Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold (17 page)

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 was 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.

T
he 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.

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.