![]() The 26-year-old put in an incredible 10,000 hours of training for the Games. Travellers arriving at Heathrow Airport were met by her image almost as soon as they stepped off their planes.īut despite being an elite athlete Ennis admitted to often being physically sick with nerves before competitions and felt deeply the pressure to win at her home Games from an expectant nation. Heroine of London 2012īy 2012 she had become perhaps Britain’s most famous contemporary athlete – a fact not lost on visitors in London for the Games, where her face gazed out from posters all over the capital. Training for several hours a day, six days a week elevated Ennis to the point where she was seen as a medal hope for Team GB at Beijing in 2008 – until disaster struck in the form of a serious bone fracture, meaning she would miss the Games.īut Ennis proved resilient as well as gifted, and with the help of Minichiello recovered to win the World Championships the following year in Berlin – even changing her long jump style to lead with her weaker foot – and she followed that up by clinching the World Indoor Championships title in 2010 in Doha, the high point of a year in which she recorded a 100% win record. A chance visit to an athletics taster event for children during the school holidays in 1996 proved to be the starting gun shot that set Team GB golden girl Jessica Ennis off on an incredible track career.Įven at the age of 11, racing hurdles for the first time, she made an immediate impression on coaches at the Don Valley stadium in her home town of Sheffield, West Yorkshire – particularly Tony Minichiello who took her under his wing and guided her to Olympic glory in London 15 years later.Īfter that first taste of athletics Ennis took up the sport in earnest, and became National Track and Field high jump champion at 14 with a leap of 1.70m, a title she would defend two years later.īut she really came to international prominence after switching to heptathlon, and in 2005 took gold at the World Junior Championships, third place in the World University Championships and first at the All England Athletics Championships.
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