“So many athletes don’t know when it is time to retire,” said Jessica Ennis-Hill, her mind as clear as the Sunday morning Rio skyline despite two hours’ sleep. “I don’t want to be that athlete who fizzles out. I don’t want to spend a year or two chasing medals and being injured. I want to end on a high.”
Ennis-Hill had come within 35 points of her dream Olympic heptathlon swansong, only to be denied by the brilliant young Belgian Nafissatou Thiam following a thrilling 800m that left both of them breathless. In the past, 30-year-old Ennis-Hill would have spent weeks mentally lacerating herself for missed opportunities, particularly in the shot put and long jump. Now, though, there was only delight at a silver medal – and an acceptance that a narrow defeat by an athlete nine years her junior might just represent a changing of the guard.
“It’s inevitable, isn’t it? The older ones have to move on and call it a day and the younger ones come through and the sport continues,” said Ennis-Hill. “I’ve had some amazing years so I’m very happy to let that happen.”
The 2012 heptathlon gold medallist wasn’t quite ready to say that her 20-year career, which started when she was a schoolgirl with dreams of making the impossible journey from the South Yorkshire championships to the Olympic Games, was over. But her words and body language left little doubt. “I’ve been trying to stay focused, but it does creep into your mind that I might not do this again,” she said. “There’s going to be big changes. It makes it harder with next year’s world championships being in London. But the heptathlon is a tough event, and I’ve done it so long. I kind of know in my mind what I am going to do – but it’s still a huge decision. I want to make sure it’s the right one.”
It won’t be made until after Ennis-Hill has a holiday, but whenever she finally jogs into the sunset she has a staunch case for being considered Britain’s greatest female track and field athlete. Not only is her trophy cabinet overflowing with Olympic and world championship medals and titles, but she has defied the opinion of many sports scientists by returning to the podium after giving birth to her son, Reggie, in 2014.
Some elite athletes, especially long-distance runners, have got back to their best after pregnancy. But the heptathlon is a seven-headed hydra, which demands exceptional speed, strength, athleticism and endurance over wildly different events. Ennis-Hill barely ran, threw or jumped competitively for three years because of injuries and giving birth. And when she returned to training, she initially could not lift heavy weights because her stomach muscles weren’t knitted together after pregnancy, while the greater flexibility she had accrued during that time also hindered her training.
But Ennis-Hill was determined to succeed. The journey was slow and uneven, and her devotion to her son meant she deliberately reduced her training from 30 hours a week to 22. Before the heptathlon, Ennis-Hill had expected her British rival, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, and the Canadian Brianne Theisen-Eaton to be her main challengers. Instead, she was blindsided by the softly spoken Thiam, a 21-year-old geography student at the University of Liège.
A month before Ennis-Hill won gold at London 2012, Thiam finished 14th at the World Junior Championships. Yet while her progress since has been rapid, the bookies still had her as a 50-1 long shot on Friday morning.
The performance of Thiam’s life started with a personal best in the 100m hurdles on Saturday, then another with a huge leap of 1.98m in the high jump – the best ever clearance in a heptathlon – to put her into contention at the end of the first day.
At that stage she was second, 72 points behind Ennis-Hill. But Thiam never relented, producing three more personal bests on the second day, including a monster 53m throw in the javelin despite having not competed in the event since June because of an elbow injury. That, as Ennis-Hill admitted, had taken the competition away as it meant she needed to beat Thiam’s time in the 800m by more than 9.47 seconds. The Briton gave it her all, but fell two seconds short as Thiam finished with 6,810 points – a personal best by 302.
But Ennis-Hill appeared to have no regrets. “I wanted to be able to walk off the track knowing I went eyeballs out and gave it everything,” she said. She was talking about her performance in Rio, but those words would also serve as an appropriate epitaph to a glorious career.
