Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold by Jessica Ennis Read Free Book Online Page A

excuse for the abject shot put of just 11.93 metres, my worst of the year. In a flash, any medal chance had gone. That was a horrible feeling.
    Klüft was way ahead by the time we got to the 800 metres, the final event. She ended up with a mind-boggling tally of 7032 points. It would be the best performance of her amazing career, topped only by Jackie Joyner-Kersee in the all-time list. I was still in a fight with Kelly for the bronze. I needed to beat her by about two seconds to get it. I gave it everything, left every last vestige of effort on the track, but was only 0.19 seconds clear at the end. It meant I missed out on the bronze by forty-one points.
    Maybe people expected me to be mortified after the shot put, but I actually saw Osaka as an achievement. I was up there with the best, had beaten them at the hurdles and 200 metres, and knew I needed to up my game in the weaker events. The other girls were generous too. Kelly was collared by the BBC trackside interviewer, Phil Jones, and said: ‘She’s the future. Everybody else better watch out.’ At the end of the heptathlon the girls all do a lap of honour together. It is the only event where they do that, but it shows that we have been through the same mill. Klüft put her arm round me and said: ‘This will be you one day.’ I smiled and thought she was a good example of how to behave as a champion. I had first competed against her in 2005 in Arles in France. I was a nobody and she was the queen of her sport, at the peak of her powers, but I remember her making a point of saying hello to me. She was like the matriarch of the event. She is such a warm person and yet she was one of those who would slap her thighs, scowl and exude aggression before competing.
    I have never been that way and Chell would berate me for it. ‘You’ve got to be more aggressive in the way you attack things,’ he said.
    Even my dad said: ‘You’ve got to give it more, “ugggghh”.’
    That’s not me, though. I liked watching people like Klüft get themselves psyched up, but I was different. Get like that and I would tense up, so I would quietly slip into my blocks instead. People would tell me I wasn’t trying, but I always was. It might have added to the image of me as being someone who could be swatted away, and I heard some of the girls commenting on my size in the early days.
    ‘Look at her, she’s so small.’
    That definitely fired me up on the inside. I wanted to show them, prove a point and prove myself. Over the years, Chell came to realize I was just as aggressive in my own way, but I was different and so he began to use different language.
    When it came to exuding that aggression and confidence, the sprinters were in a different world. They strut their stuff and walk through the athletes’ village, looking at the women as if eyeing their prey for when they have finished competing. It sometimes had the air of a cattle market. I think you have to be a certain kind of person to be a sprinter. You need a degree of arrogance, although that has changed in recent years with some of them getting older, having kids and ditching the macho posturing.
    The aftermath of the World Championships in Osaka was dominated by Kelly’s remarks about Lyudmila Blonska, who had been second to Klüft. Blonska set a new Ukrainian national record on the way to her silver medal. For many her return raised question marks, given that she had spent two years out of the sport on a doping ban and had also had a baby during her absence.
    ‘You still have doubts and ninety-nine per cent of us have doubts about certain athletes,’ Kelly told BBC Radio. ‘Unfortunately, she’s one of them. I hope she’s clean. I really do because it would please me and everyone else. We’ll find out.’
    It did not go through my head until Kelly said it, the idea that I might have been cheated out of a medal at my first World Championships, but she was right that people had suspicions. Not a lot was said but there