Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold (8 page)

I had two 20-minute sessions on an Exogen machine, too, designed to heal bones via ultrasound waves. It was not proven that it helped but I was prepared to try anything. My attitude was ‘why not?’ If I was ever seriously ill then I am the sort of person who would go from faith healer to acupuncturist in search of a cure. Someone posted a message on my website saying, ‘It’s not how far you fall but how high you bounce.’ It was all nice and encouraging but the words and messages were papering over the cracks in my life and fractures in my foot.

I could see myself literally fading away. As an athlete you work so hard to build yourself up, but I could see my leg getting thinner and thinner. I was forced to watch myself go backwards while the talk in all the papers and on the TV was about those athletes who were in the shape of their lives and were going to go for medals in Beijing.

There was also the issue of money. I felt terrible because I knew how much my family had spent booking tickets and hotels for Beijing. The cost was around £6,000 and I felt guilty that they had lost that. ‘It’s only money, isn’t it?’ my mum said, but I knew they didn’t have a lot. We never have had. I had always been taught the value of money and it was an added burden to think my family had lost so much because of me.

There was the boredom as well as the depression. I went on the Internet and got even more down via Google search. I read for hours and found lots of examples of people who had suffered with the same sort of injuries for their entire careers. It is definitely not healthy to use the Internet to diagnose yourself; it is certainly unlikely to cheer you up.

I had a protective boot put on the foot. Bill Ribbans, a top orthopaedic surgeon, handled the process. He was caring and brilliant and got the time frame right – two long, hard, bitter months. My physio Ali worked with him to create a rehab programme, and there was a lot of travelling to and from Northampton to see him, and then to and from London for more scans. I spent ages sitting in the car and simmering in near silence, angry that this should happen to me.

The year was a write-off so I looked ahead to 2009 and the indoor season the following spring. Then, looming far enough in the distance to be a realistic goal but not too far away to feel intangible, were the World Championships in Berlin in August 2009. I went to the gym and did weights and core exercises, although they were literally exercises in frustration as I could not put any weight on my foot.

Ali and Derry were devastated too. They felt they were in some way to blame, because it was their area of expertise, but never for one moment did I think like that. The unfortunate thing is that with a stress fracture you hammer away in training and it’s only when the bones fracture – literally when the cracks appear, if you like – that you feel pain and know anything is wrong. They wished they could have done something but they did everything right. It’s such a vague feeling around the navicular that it is hard to diagnose anything unless you have scans every day. I told them they were not to blame at all, because I knew that we were a team and that Chell, Ali, Derry, Mick and I were all collectively heartbroken.

They responded with a huge show of faith. Ali had been working with UK Athletics for a long time, nursing Kelly Holmes through her chronic injuries to a double gold in Athens in 2004, and I sensed she was trying to phase out of it all. I was not sure of Derry’s plans either, but Olympics are turning points for lots of people, not just athletes, and many choose to do other things after them. They sat me down during those rehab days and Derry said: ‘Ali and I have had a chat and we’ve decided we’re going through until 2012 with you.’ I broke out into a rare smile because it felt like such a commitment from them. ‘All of us are going for it,’ he added. ‘We’ve got unfinished business.’

Ali had already helped a lot, not only with her expertise but also with her attitude. She said she thought things happened for a reason. I believe that too. I am not religious but I am fatalistic. I believe you have a journey in life but I don’t believe that it’s all out of your control. I also think you have to be able to blame external things sometimes. If you constantly blame everything on the internal then it’s very hard to get over a disappointment. I don’t mean you always want to be able to say that it was the fault of the weather or the track that you didn’t perform at your best, and I am not advocating passing the buck. But it helps if you can look outside yourself.

Not that I felt that in those early days. I was so down and needed to get my head around it, but before long I wanted to do the rehab. I wanted to get down to the EIS, but I was up and down. Some days I felt like that, flushed with a new sense of positivity and wanting to do the pool sessions or the programme I had for my upper body, but on others I felt terrible and angry that everybody else was getting on with their careers.

I tried another way of coping one night. My friends dragged me out for a night on the town. I didn’t want to go because I was on crutches and wallowing in misery, but I went and enjoyed myself. A bit too much as it turned out. It was the drunkest I have ever been in my life. I got home and could not get the key in the door. Andy was asleep because he had to go to work the next day, so I struggled along in my drunken state and eventually went around the back. Andy later told me that he found me sprawled out on the back step, crutches and rehab boot all over the place. It was probably not that professional but I needed the therapy. For one night only, I just had to get hammered.

Andy had to drive me everywhere. I’d lie across the back seat with my leg up, helpless. I hated the inactivity and the dependency. I didn’t like going out, though, because my hands hurt from the crutches so, more often than not, I would stay at home, watching the box set of
Smallville
that Andy had bought me, detailing the early, pre-Superman life of Clark Kent. Maybe the following year I could make a similar leap from ordinary Sheffield girl to something quite different. Ultimately, I came to accept that you can’t undo the past.

I was touched by people’s kindness and I knew I was far from unique. I strove to keep perspective and told myself that things happen for a reason, even if you have no idea what that reason may be. I said that maybe I would look back in four years from an Olympic podium and be glad that this happened. I might not have believed it, but I went back to my
Smallville
life, working away while the rest of the world congregated in Beijing, and told myself this was not meant to be my time.

I did watch the Olympics on television. It was hard for Kelly because just three months earlier she had been in hospital with kidney failure and she had not done a heptathlon for twelve months. She still ran two personal bests and got a season’s best in another event on the first day, but unfortunately she didn’t make the podium. Nataliya Dobrynska was crowned champion with 6733 points, Blonska was second, completing a Ukrainian one-two, and America’s Hyleas Fountain took the bronze medal.

Days later the suspicions gave way to reality and it emerged that Blonska had failed a drug test. I cannot say I was surprised. It was not just that she had previously been banned, it was the fact she had come back from her ban and had turned into a sort of Superwoman, scoring far more points than she had previously. The timeline of cheats in track and field meant that this scenario could not go unchallenged.

When she was stripped of the medal and banned, I inevitably began to think back to the World Championships when I had finished fourth. I had admonished myself for not doing better in the shot put, and so to find I had been beaten by someone who had twice failed a drug test made me angry. That’s the real pain of doping: the impact it has on the innocent.

Kelly later said that she had actually seen Blonska take something while competing in Beijing. It happened as they walked out of the call room. Blonska’s husband, who is also her coach, handed her something. Kelly said she followed her to the long-jump pit and saw that she had a phial. Who knows what was in there? Maybe it was something to mask the drugs. Maybe it was innocent. But Kelly stared her in the eye, daring her to take the substance, and she did just that.

I found the whole thing depressing. The heptathlon is such a tough event that there is a sense of unity among the athletes. You are in it for yourself, of course, but you are also in it together, straining every sinew and driving your body and mind to breaking point in pursuit of the same thing. In women’s athletics, it’s the ultimate test in many ways. To then find someone has ruined all that was hard to take.

After my one night out, I worked hard that winter. It was some of the hardest work I have done because not being able to run is horrible for me. It’s what I do, what I like. It gives me a sense of purpose. I toiled away in the gym and on the cross-trainer. Then I went down for my last scan.

My dad came with me. He is such a placid, kind person. I think he may have sensed me drifting back in time so he would try to cheer me up. ‘You know what, Jess, there is one good thing about not having to go to Beijing.’

‘Oh yeah, what’s that?’

‘No smog. Tell you the truth, I’d been really worried about my asthma.’

The scan was clear. I came out smiling and my dad gave me a hug. He drove me back up the M1 to Sheffield, but stopped at Watford Gap services on the way.

‘Let’s have burgers to celebrate,’ he said. I smiled again.

T
rying to get to the top of the podium was a personal dream, but there were lots of people working away behind the scenes to make it happen. In a way it was like a house of cards, with me at the top and a broad base shouldering the load, and like a house of cards I knew it could all come crashing down at any time.

It was during my time injured that my team became complete. I had an agent but was looking for someone new and Chell got introduced to Jane Cowmeadow. When we met we clicked and have never looked back. A lot of agents will get you to do anything as long as they get their cut, but Jane only wanted me to do things that were right for me. And, to be honest, in 2009 the opportunities were still pretty scarce for a broken athlete hobbling around with a fractured foot and a broken dream. Jane’s arrival was a key moment, though, and completed the network of support specialists that people would refer to as Team Ennis. This is the team sheet in full.

TONI MINICHIELLO (Coach): Ah, Chell, what can I say about him? We had been together for more than a decade and sometimes he still treated me like that thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. He was getting better, though, and the main thing was he was a very good coach who devised top programmes. Yes, he would drive me to distraction at times with his criticism and cheese, but I also knew he got the best performances out of me.

ALISON ROSE (Physiotherapist): Ali is such a lovely person and she is passionate about what she does. She had been at the top for a long time, but she did not rest on her laurels and was always looking for ways to further her knowledge. She was also prepared to go the extra mile for me. Many physios work 9 to 5, but Ali would make the effort to see me on a Saturday if that was what was needed. During the injury she rang me every day, asking how it was feeling. Another string to her bow was her capacity to listen. If I had had an argument with Chell then I would go to see her and she let me whinge away. It was somewhere I found I could go to clear my head. She might have a quiet word with Chell afterwards. ‘Say this to her,’ she might suggest, planting seeds to make it all better. There was never any reason for her to feel bad about what had happened – it was just one of those horrible things sport threw at us.

She put me on the rehab programme and I saw her once a week for a general check-up. I might have felt fine, but she would tell me things were out of line. Ribs could move out of place and the liver and kidneys could get stuck and impact on nerves. She taught me so much.

DERRY SUTER (Soft-tissue therapist): I saw Derry twice a week. He is a caring chatterbox who works a painful brand of magic. Ali corrected my skeletal frame and Derry did the hard work of releasing my muscles. He’s brilliant, but brutal, scraping his elbow along my spine, digging his fingers into the soles of my feet. When I was doing my rehab I felt Ali and Derry really believed in me and that was a huge help during the dark days.

MICK HILL (Javelin coach): All the years of competition had taken their toll and he had needed a lot of operations, but Mick would ignore the shoulders, knees and hips, put on his boots, roll back the years and throw with me.

His passion and enthusiasm were just what I needed because the javelin was not an event that came naturally for me. So we used a contraption with a weight attached to a pulley with a javelin handle on the other end. I was not the biggest of throwers, so he worked on technique, using my whole body to get the sequence right.

It took me a long time before I could afford a javelin of my own. Now I keep them in the shed. You choose them according to length of throw. I throw pink ones (fifty-metre ones). That means they will fly and turn over at the right time. If I threw a seventy-metre javelin it would never turn and you need the tip to hit the ground first. Mick will look around, test the wind, smile at the grey sky and say: ‘Great day for throwing.’ To him, it’s always a great day.

PAUL BRICE (Biomechanist): Some of this went over my head, but Bricey would monitor performance on a laptop, draw up charts and then write reports. He was the numbers man. When we were trying to sort out the long jump, he would tell me that it was pointless to tear down the runway at ten metres per second if I slowed to seven metres just before take-off. He was looking for greater consistency and performance and he did that by breaking it all down, piece by piece. Although he is a great man who spent a lot of time getting me to where I needed to be, his banter left a lot to be desired.

PETE LINDSAY (Psychologist): The most work I have done with him is working through the respective psychologies of Chell and me and how we can best communicate in pressured situations. When something goes wrong I need instant feedback. Chell prefers to go away, think about it and then come back with a plan. To me that seemed that he did not care, but it was just different ways of working. Pete also worked with me on dealing with the pressure of the competitions and coping with the lows and frustrations brought on by injury.