Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold (19 page)

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.

I still had drug testing to do. The last race of the night had been the women’s 100 metres final. Allyson Felix, of the USA, was in there. She had finished fifth and was disappointed. We watched a TV screen showing the highlights. She said congratulations and I told her that she still had the 200 metres. She looked crestfallen in that room but would leave London with three gold medals. That’s what sport gives you – slaps in the face and then slaps on the back. You have to come back from taking punishment to be a champion.

It was around midnight when I left the stadium and headed for Team GB house, a building next to the huge Westfield shopping centre on the edge of the park. It was here that the British Olympic Association had its headquarters during the Games and they set rooms aside for the medallists and their families. That was where we had our reunion. We had a glass of champagne but the thing I remembered most was how much weight Dad had lost. I thought he was ill and asked Mum if they had been keeping something horrible from me. She said he had been poorly but said he had not eaten for days and that it was down to stress. It had taken its toll on them all. Everyone was excited when we realized the gold medal was missing.

‘Where is it? Where is it?’

We had a moment of panic before someone noticed Grandma was sitting down with it and looking at it. When I finally got back to the village, my roomies had left notes on my door. One of them said, ‘You made me cry.’ At least it was not just me.

I had not eaten since 3 p.m. that afternoon and crashed out. I was entered for the hurdles and had to say whether I was taking my place by the following morning. I decided not to. I wanted to savour the moment and I couldn’t have done that if I’d been preparing for another event. My time from my hurdles heat might have won gold in the solo event in Beijing, but it wouldn’t have in London because I was wrecked. My body had taken a pounding. I had really only entered as a back-up, in case the heptathlon had gone wrong and I needed a chance to make amends. I was not keeping anyone else out of the team so I had no hesitation in saying I was done.

The next day I celebrated with a burger and chips as I did no end of interviews. I appeared on NBC with Bruce Jenner and met Jamie Oliver, and I was introduced to 35,000 people in Hyde Park by Johnny Vaughan. I thanked all my team and family and then mentioned my fiancé. That drew a chorus of disapproval and wholesale booing. We talked some more and I mentioned the ‘f’ word again. More boos. I turned to Andy, hiding at the back of the stage, and laughed. Then I blew him a kiss. I stayed in London for that week and watched some of the sport. I was so pleased for the boxers, Anthony Joshua and Nicola Adams, who did well. I knew them because I trained alongside them in the gym at the EIS.

Suddenly, we were being invited everywhere. During that week Andy and I went to an underground Stone Roses gig organized by Adidas and attended an Omega party where I got to wear a gorgeous Alexander McQueen dress and have a celebration dinner with Team Ennis. The fun times were here.

I came back to Sheffield on a high. A lot of people had said that there is a sense of anti-climax when you finally reach your goal, that attaining all you’d ever wanted left a strange feeling of emptiness. I was glad to find I did not experience that at all. I could not stop smiling and felt enormous satisfaction and pride. I knew it was the best time of my life and that nothing would ever top it. I now wished that I could have dragged it out and savoured it, because I knew I had wished it all away.

We had a barbecue for friends and family at home. Charlotte was heavily pregnant, but she came and danced away to Andy’s mounting concern that she was about to have the baby there and then.

The momentum carried on. There was a reception for me in Sheffield city centre and I was blown away by the number of people who turned up. After I’d won the world title there had been a few hundred in the Peace Gardens, and I’d felt humbled by that. This time everybody seemed to go and thousands flocked to City Hall. My friend Lorna works in a solicitor’s in town and said everybody had been let go early. There was a note on the door of someone else’s workplace saying: ‘We’re closed. We’re going to support Jessica.’ I have since been awarded the freedom of the City. I am going to have to find out what that entitles me to, but I believe I might be able to drive sheep through the city centre.

Andy and I took a holiday in Mauritius and people kept congratulating me even there. Meanwhile, the Paralympics were taking place, stretching people’s imaginations even more and continuing the best summer I’d ever had. When they finished there was the parade for all the Olympic and Paralympic athletes in London on 10 September. That was an astonishing sight. It made you realize how a very personal quest could capture the interest of other people. I knew the Olympics were going to be big, but I did not realize it had touched so many people and that there was so much emotion invested in it. From the average bloke in the street to the Royal Family, and from school-kids to celebrities, everyone seemed to have been sucked into this incredible festival.

At the parade I saw Anthony Joshua, who also had his gold medal. He is a super-heavyweight boxer, a huge figure, and that was exaggerated as he stood next to me. We were joking with each other and I said to him: ‘Joshua, I will knock you out.’ He tapped me gently on the arm and I nearly fell over. Richard Whitehead had won a gold medal in the sprinting at the Paralympics. He stood next to me on our float and was flexing his muscles in the Tarzan pose.

‘Come on Jess, you do it.’

I told him I would not be doing that. I didn’t fancy that being the picture they printed in the papers the next day, and so I let him flex away.

Life had become strange. I did not feel famous, but I was asked to be in Robbie Williams’s music video – I had to turn it down – and I would hear kids walking down the road, saying: ‘That’s Jessica Ennis’s house.’ People drive past and point. The day after winning the gold medal, a journalist asked Andy if he was ready for the change in our lives. ‘Well, I guess we won’t be doing a big shop together for a while,’ he deadpanned. And we didn’t. I was self-conscious about going out because I would feel people staring at me. I didn’t go into the city centre for a long time. It was all so overwhelming.

Thirty-six days after winning gold, I got in the car and drove to the EIS. I had the urge to go training, to do something. I had drunk enough and eaten enough bad food and felt the need to get back to running. I had the wedding to plan for and will want to have kids one day, but I was already beginning to think about a new plan. Who knows whether I will carry on to Rio or switch to becoming a specialist hurdler in the future, but thirty-six days after my golden moment, I was a heptathlete again.

I believe we all have a journey. It may be in sport or something completely different. I receive so many letters from young people that I hope are inspired by what I have done. I do not mean that they have to become Olympians, but just to find what they want to do and then not let the setbacks along the way grind them down and make them give up. I was once a small girl from Sheffield, dealing with bullies and normal teenage insecurities, but I always believed. And when you do that, life can get unbelievable.

Points for both the Women’s Pentathlon and Heptathlon are scored from the IAAF Scoring Tables. The current (1984) tables came into force on 1 April 1985. The tables take into consideration times taken with manually timed performances and electrically timed marks. World-leading heptathletes usually score in the region of 6300 points plus.

Listed overleaf are examples of performances which would score 1000 points per discipline and 800 points per discipline, as well as the world record and Jessica’s Olympic winning score.

In the shot, long jump and javelin each athlete is allowed three trials only. In the 100m hurdles and 200m, athletes with similar performances are placed in the same heats, but the 800m race is determined from the positions of the previous six events so that the last heat comprises the leading competitors. Where possible thirty minutes should be allowed between the end of one event and the start of the subsequent event. Under present rules one false start is allowed without the athlete being disqualified but any subsequent false start by the same athlete and she will be disqualified. Any athlete failing to attempt to start or make a trial in one of the events shall not be allowed to take part in any subsequent event but shall be considered to have abandoned the competition. This is distinct from athletes failing to record a distance (e.g. three no-jumps or three no-throws) or record a height having attempted it. For records the average velocity of the wind shall not exceed 2.0 miles per second (mps).

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