Jessica ennis where is she from

Prepared is pre-armed. It worked. Ennis-Hill's time of Incredibly, it would have won individual m hurdles gold at four of the previous five Olympics.

Naturally deferential, Ennis-Hill baulks at any suggestion she had it won so early - especially with a nagging doubt about the long jump hanging over her. But, as she does several times during an hour-long conversation looking back on a career-defining victory, she admits that during those two days she often felt like a one-off version of herself.

Obviously instead it was a good different because I was ready to run the fastest time of my life. She soon showed that strength again. Having flown out of the blocks in the hurdles, she consolidated her position at the top of the standings with a jump of 1. A throw of The next scene comes just after 9pm - it is now 15 hours since her 6am alarm call. The Olympic Stadium is under floodlights. The best seat in the house belongs to Laviai Nielsen, a year-old Londoner who, as a volunteer kit carrier and sometime athlete, is walking into the stadium carrying the future Olympic champion's tracksuit.

The experience will affect Nielsen so profoundly that she will immediately knuckle down in the sport to such an extent that five years later, she will win a World Championship silver medal in the same stadium. Back in she was transfixed by Ennis-Hill's focus. The smiles on the start line for the m hurdles at 10am were gone. For the second time that day, Ennis-Hill ran faster than she had ever done before - and ever would again. A m personal best of Ennis-Hill never usually struggled to sleep between the two days of a heptathlon.

But despite her lead, she tossed and turned. Irrational fears about whether her alarm would go off - "I must have set at least three" - were part of the problem. Also concerning her was the first event of day two. The long jump. To understand the extent of those fears, we need to rewind a little. Just weeks before London , Ennis-Hill remembers calling fiance Andy Hill in floods of tears from a preparation camp in Portugal. Training for the heptathlon is a constant juggling act, with athletes rarely having the time to concentrate too heavily on one event.

In Portugal they scheduled four long jump sessions. My rhythm was all wrong. It knocked my confidence and I was just getting really frustrated. I think Tony organised it without me at first. But I got wind of it and joined in. It was just really tense. I remember going back to my room and ringing Andy and saying 'I've ruined it all, it's all going to fall apart in this event' and him just trying to make me see sense of it.

If I'd only been able to jump five metres there, London would have been a very different story. A five-metre jump was exactly how Ennis-Hill's heptathlon story resumed on day two.

Was a jump of 5. It was a brain fade of a different kind. Up in the stands, Minichiello worked out what had gone wrong. Bricey [Ennis-Hill's biomechanist Paul Brice] asked me what I was going to say to her and I said, 'I don't know, but I'll work it out by the time I get to the bottom of the stairs'. Hearing Ennis-Hill speak about Super Saturday eight years on, there is a constant sense of how London was unique. Athletically, it was indeed a one-off. Her final tally of 6, points remained her personal best until her retirement.

But emotionally she also regularly had moments where she became a woman she didn't quite recognise. The long jump was one such moment. Minichiello's adjustment paid off. A jump of 6. Cue some wild celebrations. She's not an aggressive-type celebrator. What you saw after the long jump was someone who had overcome adversity. It was just on such a big scale - not even just in the sporting world but in a huge global sense. I had never felt anything like that before. It really brought out emotions in me that normally I would have been able to keep a hold of, bottle up, then cry and celebrate behind closed doors.

That's how I'd always done it. But in those two days of competition in London there was no way of controlling that. It just meant so much. Minichiello's own out-of-character celebration came after the penultimate event - the javelin. The anxiety this time dated back 12 months to the World Championships in South Korea.

Despite outperforming Tatyana Chernova in five of the seven events in Daegu, Ennis-Hill managed a throw of just That metre gap ruined any chance of winning gold although Ennis-Hill was later upgraded from silver when Chernova failed a drugs test. Minichiello said in interviews at the time that her javelin capitulation had left him "stunned".

London witnessed a stunning turnaround. Ennis-Hill outperformed Chernova - throwing That previous year's painful metre gap became a joyous second cushion over her nearest rival, Lithuania's Austra Skujyte, before the final event, the m in the heptathlon, points are converted into seconds for the m.

That was the point where we kind of knew that I would have to do something pretty terrible to mess it up going into the m. If the attitude on day one from Ennis-Hill's support team was one of restraint, now, with the gold medal all but hers, they couldn't be contained.

I knew I hadn't but it was just a really strange environment. Even Toni was upbeat and positive. With a near seven-hour break between the conclusion of the javelin and the m, all but one of her fellow competitors headed back to their apartments in the Olympic village.

Having spent years religiously keeping away from the stadium, now she couldn't bear to leave. And so, before the gold medal moment that cemented her place in the limelight forever, Ennis-Hill wiled away the afternoon in a windowless room in the bowels of the Olympic stadium, watching dressage on mute.

She was bugging me asking me what lead she had and how many seconds it was. As she knew perfectly, the margin [13 seconds] was massive. The only threat to her gold-medal coronation was injury. A danger she understood only too well. Four years previously Ennis-Hill had been preparing to make her Olympic debut at the Beijing Games in Having finished fourth at the World Championships in Japan she would have headed back to the Far East as a medal contender.

The injury kept her out of competition for a year, and she admitted at one stage she didn't know if she would be able to make a comeback. Quotes 'We need someone in the sport, we need a story, someone who the British public know so when you say "Jess" they know exactly who she is, what event, you don't have to explain it, she is recognised by what she's done.

I can't believe it. I'm the world champion, I feel like crying. I've dreamt so many times about winning medals and becoming world champion, doing a lap of honour.

It's the best feeling in the world. I can't even put into words how I feel right now, it's such an adrenaline rush and such an amazing feeling. Trivia At just 5'4", Ennis is one of the smallest competitors on the heptathlon circuit. View the full list of related articles ». Jessica Ennis faces the media after her wedding to Andy Hill.

View the full list of related photos ». To help make this website better, to improve and personalize your experience and for advertising purposes, are you happy to accept cookies and other technologies. Latest Photos. Live Sports Communication error please reload the page. Jessica progressed through junior and youth competitions with great success and it was clear that she was a talent for the future.

After leaving school, she was accepted into The University of Sheffield to study Psychology. But her studies would have to balance with her blossoming athletics career. After winning a bronze medal in the Commonwealths Games, she graduated from University and started her professional career in full-time athletics.

All sports have highs and lows. In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics in , Jessica suffered a career-threatening injury. Broken bones in her right foot means she had to pull out of the competition.

Determined to return strong from such a disappointing setback, Jessica spent the next 12 months working harder than ever. That work soon paid off. In she won her heptathlon gold medal at the World Championships. It would prove to be the start of a sustained period of success that would see Jessica pick up two more World titles and the European crown. Of course, the gold medal that would cement her place in sporting history came at the Olympics in London.

It was truly an occasion to remember. Most people know the story of Super Saturday.