Go Jess go! After shot put disappointment Ennis ends first day on a high in 200m and is back in gold contention in heptathlon
- Home favourite started bid for heptathlon gold with stunning 100m hurdles run and then cleared 1.86m in high jump
- She did sit top of the leaderboard with 2,249 points, a lead of 25 before finishing a disappointing ninth in shot put
- Best throw of 14.28 means she slides down to second overall with 3,062 points
- Thrilling 200m race puts her back in the driving seat with a lead of 184 points
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Jessica Ennis sent the Olympic stadium into raptures yesterday with Act One of a stellar heptathlon performance – then she got set for gold.
The 26-year-old star brought a capacity crowd to its feet with a sensational start to the athletics, setting a British record in the event for the 100-metre hurdles.
Now she is preparing for Act Two today, with a chance to fulfil her dream, and with hopes of a gold medal weighing constantly on her slender shoulders.
Joy: Jessica Ennis raises her arms in celebration after finishing the 200-meter race in the heptathlon competition earlier today
Event four: Jessica Ennis claims a personal best in the 200m to put her back in the driving seat for heptathlon gold
Thumbs up: Ennis is leading the way in the heptathlon after the first day of action at the Olympic Stadium
In remarkable scenes before 80,000 spectators and a TV audience of millions, she jumped for joy... ran for glory... and won the support of a nation for the most important two days in her sporting life.
At one stage she was conducting applause from the track by raising her arms and turning 360 degrees around the vast Olympic stadium, creating the most electrifying atmosphere it has seen so far.
‘Go girl! Go Jess!’ they bellowed, chanting ‘En-nis! En-nis!’ until it reached a crescendo.
But the Sheffield-born champion was rendered ‘speechless’ when she saw her 12.54 second record for the 100-metre hurdles flash up on the scoreboard – a lifetime best, and equal to the gold medal winning time in the women’s hurdles in Beijing.
Close call: Jessica Ennis crosses the finish line of the 200 metre run
The end of the race: Jessica Ennis crosses the finish line in lane 7 with Jessica Zelinka of Canada in lane number six
Record run: Ennis ran a personal best in the 200m putting her on top of the leader board
The amazing performance propelled her instantly to the top of the leader board, precisely the kind of start she needed. And still the crowd cheered.
‘Show us yer abs!’, a lone voice demanded as she took off her tracksuit for the high jump. (The 2012 poster girl has come to be known as the Ab Fab pin-up because of her enviable six-pack abdominal muscles and torso, repeatedly grandstanded yesterday to the delight of front-row spectators).
Sometimes the crowd cranked up the volume so much it drowned out the names of the athletes as they were announced on loudspeakers. When they clapped and stamped their feet, it vibrated all through the stands.
High hopes: Jessica Ennis fell slightly behind in the heptathlon after a disappointing shot put, but is expected to claw back some ground in the 200m
Jumping for victory: Jessica Ennis during the Women's Heptathlon High Jump at the Olympic Stadium
Words of advice: Jessica Ennis listens to her coach Toni Minichiello as she competes in the Women's Heptathlon High Jump
Home support: The crowd inside the Olympic Stadium roared as the 26-year-old stepped up for her attempt
‘It just blew me away to be honest,’ Ennis said afterwards. ‘How much they got behind me was amazing. You try and prepare yourself but it’s nothing like you can imagine. It was a great start to the day.’
The athletics were conducted in breaks between a loudspeaker soundtrack that blared out hits from the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, among others – plus Bob Marley’s Sun is Shining when it pelted with rain for a few minutes, flooding uncovered areas in the stands and drenching lower-tier spectators in their seats.
Barely a single empty seat could be spotted inside the stadium when Ennis and her team-mates were in the arena.
Her parents Vinnie Ennis and Alison Powell were here – waving a Union Flag and cheering their daughter towards victory at every stage. ‘This is her dream,’ they said – then spoke of their hopes that she will achieve her ambition to win gold in front of a home crowd.
Spirit: Jessica Ennis congratulates Katerina Johnson Thompson as she competes in the high jump phase of the pentathlon
‘She has dreamed about this for so long,’ Miss Powell said. ‘It has been a long wait, and she has worked very hard.’
Elsewhere, crowds gathered at a giant screen in the Olympic Park, the Stratford equivalent of Wimbledon’s Murray Mount.
There was another in Sheffield’s Don Valley stadium, where she first ran as a 13-year-old. Her secondary school hosted a final ‘good luck’ celebration, and the city council appeared to have contingency plans to cope with a chaotic homecoming if she returns triumphant.
On the internet, Facebook mentions of ‘Ennis’ increased 600-fold around the time she chalked up her first stunning result.
But it meant Ennis, who was absent from Beijing four years ago through injury, is now under intense pressure to come up with a gold.
Uniquely in the public mind, and possibly in her own, winning mere silver would be regarded as failure. Tony Minichiello, her coach since childhood, said she was probably the only person in the British track-and-field team who, if she fails to win gold, it would be viewed as a loss.
Jessica Ennis made an explosive start to her 100m hurdles heat and raced away from the field to claim victory in a world best time
Ennis (left) earned 1,195 points from her time of 12.54 seconds, the fastest hurdles time ever run in a heptathlon
Ennis left the field trailing in heat five of the 100m hurdles, recording a time of 12.54 seconds
The hurdles event is usually one of Ennis's strongest, so she will have to sustain her form in the high jump, shot put and 200m later today
Sometimes I surprise even myself! Ennis reacts with a smile after her brilliant start to the heptathlon
SEVEN STEPS TO GLORY
TODAY
1. 100m Hurdles - From 10.05am (Ennis in heat five)
1. 100m Hurdles - From 10.05am (Ennis in heat five)
Ennis's Personal Best: (PB): 12.79sec
World Record (WR): 12.62sec
2. High Jump - From 11.15am
PB: 1.95m WR: 1.97m
3. Shot Put - From 7pm
PB: 14.67m WR: 17.29m
4. 200m - 8.45pm
PB: 22.80sec WR: 22.30sec
TOMORROW
5. Long Jump - From 10.05am
PB: 6.31m WR: 7.52m
6. Javelin - From 11.40am
PB: 47.11m WR: 56.36m
7. 800m - 8.35pm
PB: 2:07.81min WR: 2:01.84
Jessica competed yesterday in the hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 metres. She appeared to be on a roll with her early jumps but stopped at 1.86 metres. Her verdict: ‘I’m disappointed I didn’t get another height but 1.86 is not bad.’
Not bad indeed when you consider it’s more than eight inches higher than she is. She stands just 5ft 5in tall and has been nicknamed The Tadpole because of her diminutive stature and 9st weight. On field and track however, she is set to become a giant. But the big challenge is still to come.
Today she faces the long jump, 800 metres, and – perhaps her weakest link – the javelin. The crucial last contest, the 800 metres, will be at 8.35pm, with a prime-time TV audience of more than 12million expected to be watching.
Heptathletes need to be light and lean enough for the hurdles and high jump, but immensely powerful for the long jump, javelin and shot put events.
Ipswich-based heptathlon trainer Dan Brown said: ‘The power-to-weight ratio is key. If you are smaller, like Jessica, you may be at a disadvantage for the throwing events.’
Whatever happens with the medals, her future income is guaranteed. Even before the Games started, she was reckoned to be in line for a fortune from lucrative sponsorship deals, the first female athlete to break the £1million barrier.
Athletics? It was just a hobby. As a teen she really wanted to marry Justin Timberlake
When she steps out into the Olympic stadium today, Jessica Ennis will know that all of Britain is rooting for her.
But there will be one significant fan anxiously following her progress in the heptathlon from further afield.
For among millions across the world watching the 26-year-old from Sheffield will be her elderly Jamaican grandmother Muriel, sitting in front of a small television in Brooklyn, New York.
Potential: Jessica Ennis aged 14, receiving a school sports price
In the adrenalin-fuelled run-up to London 2012, Ennis has become the poster girl for the nation’s Olympic hopes.
But for 78-year-old Muriel Ennis, who left the small Jamaican town of Linstead for a better life in Sheffield in 1962, her grand-daughter’s Olympic debut marks the climax of a more personal success story.
‘I’m so proud of her,’ she told the Mail this week, speaking at her tiny apartment which has photographs of Ennis on the walls. ‘I love Jessica. She’s not a show-off. I call her cool.’
Muriel set off for Britain in 1962 with her late builder husband Winston, as part of a wave of Caribbean workers, later moving on to the US to care for a sick relative. Now the only thing that tarnishes her joy at her granddaughter’s progress is that asthma means she is not well enough to travel to London to see her compete.
Jessica is the daughter of Muriel and Winston’s son Vinnie – a 60-year-old painter and decorator – and social worker Alison Powell.
But Muriel is convinced it is from her Jamaican family that Jessica inherited her steely determination. Linstead has already produced half a dozen Olympic gold medallists despite a population of just 14,000.
From her Derbyshire-born mother’s side of the family, Ennis inherited a strong work ethic. Her late great-grandfather, Raymond Ollerenshaw, was a sheep farmer awarded an OBE for services to farming. He was also a presenter on the television show One Man and His Dog.
And so Jessica Ennis emerged from these diverse roots on both sides of the world.
Born in Sheffield in 1986, she was raised in a modest terraced house in the city’s Sharrow district along with her younger sister Carmel, who is now a nursery nurse.
Although Jessica’s parents were not particularly sporty – her father suffers from asthma – even as a young girl their daughter displayed signs of the perfectionism that would take her to the top of her game.
‘She was demanding and never satisfied,’ her mother recalled. ‘Once she’d done a drawing it would be, “Right, what’s next?”’
Her family still joke about the fact that Jessica started athletics aged ten during the summer holidays only because the lessons provided cheap childcare for her working mother.
While her sister Carmel preferred chatting with her friends in the stands at Sheffield’s Don Valley Stadium, Jessica displayed a natural ability from the start.
But she was not always as confident about her own abilities as her coaches would have liked – insistent that to her athletics was just a hobby.
As a teenager, Ennis was often preoccupied by boys and clothes (for a time she obsessively made plans to meet and marry American heart-throb Justin Timberlake).
Her athletic skills blossomed almost in spite of herself, however.
During those years, her level-headed father kept his daughter on the straight and narrow, ferrying her to training sessions and competitions.
Jessica Ennis aged 20 during the European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2006
Nicola Minichiello, whose ex-husband Toni has coached Jessica from the age of 13, recalled: ‘Keeping her on task was the hard bit. She strayed a few times.
‘She was adamant that by the time she was 21 she would have settled down and be married with children. I don’t think she realised how talented she was.
Academic Ennis: Aged 23 accepting an honorary degree from Sheffield University in her home city Sheffield
‘You could see her potential and that little spark even at a young age. It was almost immeasurable, I can’t describe it. Her power and her speed. She had flair.’
Mrs Minichiello often used to pick the schoolgirl up and drive her to training to ensure she attended.
‘She said it was only a hobby,’ she said.
‘Sometimes it was frustrating because I wanted her to come to a competition or do extra training and make the most of her potential but she wanted to be a normal teenager.’
But whether she liked it or not, Ennis’s increasingly spectacular sporting achievements continued to get her noticed. At King Ecgbert comprehensive, she smashed every sporting record.
Chris Eccles, the former head of PE at the school, said: ‘I remember someone shouted over, “Chris, you have got to come and look at this now”.
She had jumped 1.60m in the high jump. It was phenomenal. To jump higher than her height defied gravity. I don’t know how she does it. She defies gravity.’
Today, Ennis can jump 1.90m. In May, she was dubbed ‘wonder woman’ after beating Denise Lewis’s previous heptathlon world record.
Ever since, she has been regarded as one of Britain’s strongest hopes for an Olympic gold.
And yet despite all this, Ennis, who used to work as a waitress at Pizza Hut, has remained a home bird.
She chose to study for a degree in psychology at the University of Sheffield rather than take up a scholarship at a US university.
And she still lives in Sheffield with her childhood sweetheart Andy Hill, a construction manager she met when she was still at school.
She credits her fiancé, whom she will marry next May, with keeping her feet on the ground.
‘Andy helps me to realise that throwing a javelin one centimetre less than I wanted is not the end of the world,’ she said recently.
And according to her grandmother, Ennis even considered giving up sport last year to start a family.
‘She said she was going to retire when she reached 25. I said: “Jessica! What are you talking about?” Maybe she’s thinking about a family.’
Certainly, once the Olympics are out of the way, her attention will be focused on her wedding.
Whatever she decides to do next, there is little doubt that for Muriel, her grand-daughter’s rise to stardom is nothing short of miraculous.
Memories of her own very basic Jamaican childhood are ever present. When she thinks of what Ennis has achieved, she is almost overcome by pride.
Open for business: A view of the Olympic Stadium as it begins its first day of being used for athletics
Not a spare seat in sight: Spectators attend the athletics event held at the Olympic Stadium in London during the London 2012 Olympic Games
Gloomy: Grey skies loom overhead at the Olympic Stadium
Olympic gold medal winner from 1992 Sally Gunnell chats to Prime Minister David Cameron, while the Duchess of Cambridge talks to former athlete David Hemery (right) at the opening session of athletics this morning
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183062/Jessica-Ennis-running-heptathlon-gold-thrilling-200m-race.html#ixzz22WfLJy00
