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

took us to hospital and I felt a dark wave rushing through my body and I came close to passing out. When my parents arrived at the hospital, I was in tears. I said I was sorry about the door, but of course they did not care about that. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ my dad said. It sounds sick I know, but I had always wanted a scar, so I was quite pleased with the telltale mark that I still have on my arm. Little did I know that more serious injuries and deeper mental scars lay ahead.
    I was intimidated by everyone at the track at first and it took me a few years before I stopped being scared of Chell too. He just had a very blunt way and it often made me upset. I was sensitive and he did not realize that. Sometimes he still says things and I think, ‘You can’t say that,’ but perhaps it is his way of dragging the best out of us all.
    The group evolved and people gradually drifted away. It happens, especially with girls. They get to the ages of fifteen and sixteen and the temptations of teenage life seem more pleasurable than slogging your guts out on a wet and windy track while receiving barbs and brickbats. We still had a great group, though, and I became really good friends with Hannah, who was a couple of years older. It was still a difficult situation as quite a few of the girls were older and started going out a lot. There were lots of parties and my friends would get exasperated with me.
    ‘Oh, come on, you’re always training,’ they would say.
    I was, and it was hard, but I already knew, at the age of fifteen, that I wanted to be an athlete. I had fledgling ideas of being a chef or a journalist, but deep down I knew that, for some reason, I wanted this.
    ‘All I want to do is be on top of the podium,’ I told my parents.
    ‘You will be,’ they said.
    ‘But when?’
    ‘One day. Soon.’
    By the sixth form I was training every night and competing at weekends. It was relentless. I have kept my friends from school, but we were doing different things then. My friends generally had more money than me too, either because their parents would help or because they could go out and get part-time jobs, but I struggled for time and money. It was my choice to do this, but I also felt as if I was missing out.
    It was around that time when Chell began calling me ‘the reluctant athlete’, and there were plenty of times when I just did not want to go training. There were other times, after more hard words had left me a crumpled wreck crying in my room, that my dad decided he was going to go down to the track and have a word with this coach.
    ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘It will only make it worse.’
    My parents have never really been ones to intervene. They are the antithesis of the pushy parents so prevalent around sport and schools. Chell and I would go to the English Schools competitions and be amazed at the pressure heaped on the kids by their parents. Many would scream at them and berate them if the times did not add up. It was sad to see and made you understand why so many dropped out. In fairness to Chell, he always had a long-term plan. Many coaches want the reflected glory of their athletes’ trophies and titles, but Chell was never like that. He was in it for the long haul and said that the plan was not to make me a great junior but a great senior. For someone with an impatient streak, that was hard to grasp, but I am glad that I did not have a coach or parents living out their dreams through me and driving me headlong towards burn-out.
    The one time my dad did intervene was when a girl at school said something racist about me to my friend Charlotte. She told me, I told my parents, and Dad went round to the girl’s house and shouted at her on the doorstep. It probably unearthed old wounds for him, but it is the only time I have ever encountered anything like that. I never consider the colour of my parents and I was amazed when I saw on Twitter that someone had posted a message: ‘Jessica Ennis’s dad is