JESSICA ENNIS, BRITAIN’S golden girl of the London Olympics, admitted on Sunday that her fiance had helped share the immense pressure she was under before she triumphed in the heptathlon.
Her success came on Britain’s most successful day at an Olympics for 104 years when the host nation won six golds, but it was the 26-year-old multi-eventer who dominated the Sunday newspaper front pages.
Ennis, looking fresh-faced despite only getting two hours’ sleep, said her fiance Andy Hill, a construction boss, had helped to shoulder the burden of pressure and “got the worst of it.”
“I think obviously I was really aware of all the pressure and what people were expecting me to do,” she told a press conference.
“Everyone was just expecting me to win so I have had a few moments at home with my fiance worrying a bit and wondering if it was all going to go right – the way I wanted it to – or whether something would happen and it would fall apart, so it was a huge amount of pressure.
“But again, just such a unique position that I was in and I wanted to make the most of that opportunity – just make sure I trained as hard as I could and delivered on those two days.
“Thankfully I can sit here and say that I did.”
She raised laughs when she said that to celebrate her win, “I’m definitely going to relax, eat lots of rubbish food, have a few glasses of wine and enjoy this moment for as long as possible.”
In the wake of her success, Ennis has pulled out of the individual 100m hurdles event despite running a blistering 12.54sec during the heptathlon event, which would equalled the gold medal-winning time in Beijing.
“It’s been a long build-up and it’s been stressful. I did think about it (entering the 100m hurdles) especially when I ran a personal best in the hurdles.
“But for me it was just about the heptathlon. I’m more than happy with that and I think I just need to rest now,” she told BBC TV.
