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

were raised eyebrows and rolled eyeballs. Everyone felt that she was not right. There was something about her, putting up bigger scores than she had done before her ban. It tainted the competition because there is a nice feeling in the heptathlon of all being in it together. Unfortunately, drug-taking is part of sport and you try to balance your cynicism with your naivety. There are the classic things that are supposedly telltale signs – the braces on the teeth, the pitted skin, the deep voice. The grapevine whispers said that, whatever the IAAF – the governing body – had said about the World Championships being drug-free, Blonska was doing something very wrong.
    In Britain I do not think there is much of a problem and we lead the way in testing athletes. The ‘whereabouts’ system means that you have to say where you will be for an hour a day every day. That can be quite hard to keep track of and, in its early days, there were times when I had to change training sessions and I forgot to update my details. It meant I could easily have had a missed test against my name. Three of those and you get a doping ban. It became much easier when you could update your details online and now I have a testing slot of between 6 and 7 a.m. because I know that I am going to be at home at that time.
    That can still be uncomfortable and you may be fast asleep when you get the knock on the door and so you stumble downstairs in your PJs. You get to know the testers because they often cover the same area, but sometimes you may get a random test from an IAAF tester, perhaps a German man you’ve never met before, and so he comes into your house with his gloves and fridge and blood-testing kit.
    Once they came and I had been to the toilet two minutes before they arrived. So when they asked for a urine sample I couldn’t give one. We sat on the sofa watching BBC
Breakfast
, while I kept going back to the kitchen to swig more water. It is intensely frustrating because you just want to get on with the rest of your day and training. Now I always make sure I hold it in during the waking hours. It can be very uncomfortable but I know I cannot go to the loo before 7 a.m. because if I can’t perform for the testers they will have to stay with me until I can.
    It is a complicated process too. The athlete has to do everything so you fill in forms, separate the samples, screw the tops and divide the bottles. Now we have to wear gloves. I asked why and I was told that there is a substance people have used which they keep under their fingernails and then flick into the samples to neutralize the drugs.
    For me this is another world and I can’t comprehend why anybody would go to such lengths to cheat themselves and their rivals. The vast majority of athletes are first and foremost competing for the love of their sport rather than for great financial reward, though of course these days the potential for earning among top athletes is high, so I suppose some people might feel tempted to ditch their morals in order to get up there. But how you could gain any pleasure from success on those terms is beyond me.
    When I started competing on the international scene, Chell would always tell me to keep an eye on my water bottle. It sounded fanciful to me, but he was worried that somebody might spike it with something. I do not think anyone would do that, but once he put the thought in my head I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. So ‘water carrier’ was quickly added to his list of duties.
    But you have to take responsibility too. I was always taught that you can never shift the blame. It is why I don’t take many supplements because you don’t know, 100 per cent for sure, what is in it. There is an online system now where you can type in the ingredients and it will tell you whether it is prohibited or not, but even so I am sure there are some innocent people being snared in the system. You hear stories about people eating contaminated meat and, in