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Authors: Jessica Ennis

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Sports

Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold (7 page)

BOOK: Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold
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The sessions inside the EIS were just as bad. The lactic acid filled the muscles and made my legs feel leaden. It was not just my legs either. The acid got into my arms, my bum, my hamstrings. It spread like a black stain until it was constant and then I would feel this crushing pain behind my eyes.

‘I’ve got lactic in my brain,’ I told Chell. He shook his head and walked past me as I died quietly on the floor.

As usual I had felt the lactic build up gradually during the session until the one rep where I crossed that line and it flooded through me. In those circumstances there is nothing you can do. You can’t feel your legs or your arms. A few of the girls in the group threw up. That happened every session. Their bodies had conditioned them to be sick when they felt the lactic. I hate being sick and never got to that point, so I held it in and came apart instead.

‘It’s meant to be hard,’ Chell would say to us. ‘This is the worst it can ever get.’

He reminded me of that in Götzis. ‘You’ve done the work,’ he told me. ‘It will be painful but not as bad as that.’ As it turned out, he was wrong.

That night we went to the athletes’ parade in the town. Derry Suter, my soft tissue therapist, came with me. There was a barbecue and the heptathletes all had to run down a path between the crowds, hi-fiving all the kids as we went. The next step of the time-honoured programme that never changes took place in the town hall. Each athlete was called up onto the stage. This was my first time in Götzis but I would come to find that the presenter would say the same thing to me year after year.

‘I’m small, too,’ she would begin, ‘but
I’ve
got my heels on.’

I smiled and accepted the rose that they gave to each athlete. It was the ancient side of old-fashioned, but not as bad as the time they used to hold a Miss Heptathlete type of beauty pageant before the competition in Desenzano del Garda in Italy. Quite how they got us all to do that I don’t know, but we would parade around the stage there before the judges voted on who was worthiest of this high honour. I won it once but I do not count it among my greatest achievements.

The trappings of Götzis disguised how important it was, and on Saturday 31 May we all turned up for the start of competition. There was little chat among the competitors. I am quite friendly with Jessica Zelinka, from Canada, and would talk to Hyleas Fountain, the best American, but there is nobody I would call a close friend. I compartmentalize my life and have friends and rivals, business colleagues and family.

The competition began, as ever, with the 100 metres hurdles, my favourite event, and I did not feel right from the start. For me it was a rubbish time and the vague niggle I had had beforehand was still there. It is easy to panic as an athlete, viewing every little ache or pain into impending doom, but I said to myself, ‘What’s going on?’ Then it got really bad in the high jump.

The sense of panic was rising now. At first my fear was that I would not be able to get another jump in and I needed the points. Then it grew into a fear of having to pull out of the event and I did not want to do that because I had finished every heptathlon that I had started. It would be some time before these doubts and fears would merge into the deep, dark realization that the entire Olympic dream was in the balance.

Neil Black, the UK Athletics physio and future performance director, gave me some treatment at the side of the track.

‘It feels like the ankle’s blocked,’ I said. ‘Like it needs cracking or pulling or something.’

Neil manipulated it and it felt looser. I tried a run and stopped quickly.

‘I can’t,’ I said. The panic was now all-engulfing.

Still, I went to the shot put and set a personal best. That event allows you to get onto your toes and so it was a different part of the foot I was using. But a PB? Clearly, it did not seem to be anything too serious. And then came the final event of that first day, the 200 metres. I clocked 23.59 seconds. That was a poor time, and in the home straight I felt as though I was going backwards. I struggled to push off my right foot at all, and by the end I was second overall, behind Anna Bogdanova, and I could hardly walk.

I struggled across the infield with Neil to get my stuff.

‘Walk as naturally as you can,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ I replied, but every step hurt. ‘It’s really sore.’

I went into the physio room under the grey stand and my ankle was encased in ice. Not for one minute did I think the Olympics were in doubt, but I was gutted. I could see training schedules and plans being thrown up in the air. I could see sessions being lost and, for someone who thrives on a plan, it was an awful prospect.

Chell was being upbeat and said: ‘It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.’

The press guys came in and did an interview. That was the hardest thing. I just wanted to cry my eyes out, but I didn’t want to be secretive. I was given an old pair of bright yellow crutches that someone had found at the back of the stand and went back to the hotel.

I put on a brave face. I was sure it was nothing, I said. Chell said it was just a precaution. Dave Collins, the UK Athletics performance director said he hoped people would not go all Chicken Licken and suggest the sky was falling down. He had reason to be concerned, with Paula Radcliffe still on crutches too after being diagnosed with a stress fracture to the femur just two weeks before.

That night, back at the hotel, it began to sink in how serious this might be and I was distraught. I’d never pulled out of a heptathlon and I was anxious, not knowing what was wrong. I went to my hotel room and cried. My grandparents were over that weekend. There had been a story in one of the papers saying how, when I was young and wavering, my grandad gave me a pound for every personal best. I spoke to him and he said: ‘A pound! It was a fiver. Everyone in the village thinks I’m tight.’ I said, ‘All right, Grandad, I’ve got other things to worry about.’

Neil sorted me a flight and I flew back early on Sunday. I rang Andy, who was awaiting my call and drove down. I was in floods of tears when I saw him because my mindset had darkened.

‘I’m not going to the Olympics, I’m not going to the Olympics.’

I took a call from Chell who tried to lift my spirits.

‘I’m not going to the Olympics, am I?’

‘Yes, of course you are, everything’s fine.’

Neil had told me to get ice on it and try to do some rotating exercises before he picked me up and drove me back to the hospital the next day. I think the potential outcomes were getting more depressing with each person who told me that there was nothing to worry about.

The MRI scan took forty minutes and the CT one took five. I hobbled from the hospital to the Olympic Medical Institute to see Paul Dijkstra, the UK Athletics doctor, who explained that if there was a lot of white on the scan then that showed the inflamed area. When we looked at the scans it was like snow. There was a lot of white.

‘You have a stress fracture in your navicular and a stress fracture in your metatarsal,’ he said. In total I actually had three fractures. I couldn’t believe it.

‘How bad are they?’

His look told me everything and Doc, being a clinician, was not one to sugar-coat the truth. ‘You’re not going to the Olympics,’ he said. It blew me away. All my family had been telling me it would be OK and, deep down, I’d been convincing myself of the same. Neil gave me a hug and had to leave to get me some tissues, but there was more to come. ‘It’s a serious injury,’ Doc said. Then he told me my career might be over. I was twenty-two years old and potentially finished. I cried some more.

I went back to my cell-like room and felt like a condemned woman. I rang my parents and Chell. I could tell from his voice that he was really upset. Derry Suter later told me just how bad Chell had been and that he was really cut up.

I had to stay down in London because I needed a bone density scan. That was horrible because the OMI rooms are like student accommodation. I sat in my room and mulled it over. Neil took me out to a restaurant that night. It was a blur. I don’t know how he coped. I was crying all the time and my face was puffy and red. I don’t know what the waiter must have thought.

Beforehand, Doc had said that if it was just a stress fracture of the metatarsal then it would not be that bad and we could try to make the Olympics. It turned out to be worse, affecting that back part of the foot behind the metatarsals where the blood supply is so poor.

I didn’t want to make it worse and break it. We could have tried to speed up the process by staying off my feet for three weeks, instead of eight, and then having an operation to put screws in to hold it. It was a massive gamble but I was not tempted at all. I desperately wanted to go to Beijing, but not at the risk of ending my career.

The response was incredible. I was so glad to get home to Sheffield and my family and Andy. I had texts, e-mails and cards from all manner of people. Paula Radcliffe passed on her number and said she was there if I needed to talk. I thought that was an impressive thing to do. Paula has been through so many injury crises, but the fact she could be bothered to offer to help when she, too, was racing against time and an ailing body to be fit for the Olympics was quite something.

Another person who rang up was Nathan Douglas, the triple jumper, who had missed the World Championships the previous year with a hamstring injury. Everyone said, ‘Keep your chin up’, but when it is actually happening you don’t want to listen. It feels like your world is falling apart. Words can’t restore that. Nathan understood that. He said people told him he would be back but all he could think about was the missed opportunity. Sometimes it is best not to mollycoddle people. The truth hurts, but half-truths are worse.

Kelly sent me a couple of supportive messages. I thought she had a good chance to take the gold now if she was fit, with Blonska and Tatyana Chernova also in the mix. I didn’t think anyone had looked outstanding on that first day in Götzis, so it was quite open, but that just made it worse, to have to sit at home and try not to think, ‘That could have been me.’ I still don’t know to this day who won that year in Götzis.

It got to me. There was a
Sky News
report on my injury when I left the hospital on crutches. My dad says he remembers flicking on the TV, seeing that and thinking, ‘Poor kid.’ He also saw the tears. ‘Seeing you cry in public was hard,’ he said. ‘That’s not Jess. You just don’t do that.’

There were so many flowers in the house that it looked like a funeral parlour. It was hard not to wallow in self-pity or become consumed by a flood of what-ifs and why-mes? I knew that everyone got injuries, that they were part and parcel of an athlete’s life, but to devote your life to something and have it snatched away was a bit like suffering a bereavement. You’ve lost something that is part of you. It’s devastating. Heartbreaking.

It was only later that I wondered what it was like for my parents and for Chell. It can’t have been easy for any of them. My dream is the same as Chell’s so he was suffering too. But you get consumed by what is happening to you alone. Later, my mum gave an interview where she explained what it was like for her. She said: ‘It was horrible, just horrible, not being able to put something right for your child. She was absolutely heartbroken. She was living in a little terrace and we went round with a card and some flowers. She had this big contraption that she had to put her foot in twice a day – I’ve still got no idea what it was. She was desperately down, saying, “My career’s over”, “What’s the point?” I think it helped that her boyfriend, Andy, had broken his leg really badly playing football and she had seen him go through that. She had supported him but, of course, it was
her
career.’

I had looked after Andy after he’d had his accident and in some ways his was even worse. He had broken his tibia and fibula playing football and it had taken nine months to heal properly. It was horrible for him and he did moan – can you get this for me, can you do that? – but now the roles were reversed. I had not coped that well with Andy’s injury when I had gone to the hospital and seen him with an external fixator, effectively a cage, attached to his leg, holding it together. The nurse showed me how to clean the pins. She explained that when he bent his leg the flesh would tear. The thought of that, combined with seeing someone I love in pain, plus the claustrophobic heat in there, meant that before I knew it I was coming around on the floor, with a group of faces all peering down on me and an alarm bell sounding.

I heard Andy’s voice. ‘You’ve always got to be the centre of attention, haven’t you?’ he was saying with a smile on his face.

This time I was. Mum set up a rota of family and friends so there was always someone with me. I think her background in working with people facing crises helped. She knew loneliness can be debilitating for those feeling low and Andy still had a job to go to. Carmel was also on the rota. By now we got on great and the teenage sparring days seemed a long way off. I think a lot of siblings are probably like that and only really become good friends when they are separated. Now she’s also got a career of her own, working with nursery school kids and showing her caring side off to great effect.

I was told I’d be on crutches for two months. Up until then I had been lucky with injuries. There was the time as a kid when I had fallen off a roundabout and gashed my head open. Then there was the Pippi Longstocking day. But in terms of my athletic career, I had been lucky. And now my luck had turned.

There were some very dark days after that. Dave Collins asked me if I wanted to go to the Olympics anyway to taste the whole experience. It would be good for London in another four years, but that seemed an age away. It was impossible to think about 2012 when I was flat on my back for an hour a day on a magnetic bed. It had been shipped in from UK Athletics and had a hood that went over the leg that looked like a Dalek’s head and it weighed about a ton. We had to break it down to get it up the stairs. Andy said that it used up so much electricity that when I switched it on the entire street went dark.

BOOK: Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold
10.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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