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

smell of the track can still transport me back to being a ten-year-old girl sitting on the concrete steps, to the Peace Gardens, where I would one day be treated to a civic reception, I feel this city is part of me.
    I had also started seeing Andy that year. He went to King Ecgbert’s like me, but was three years older, which makes a big difference at that age. He had gone out with my friend Charlotte’s big sister and thought of me as Little Jess. We met on a night out in a club called Republic. He says I chased him around the dance floor, but I really didn’t. We talked and exchanged numbers. A few days later I went for a drink with my friend Georgina and she persuaded me to text him and invite him to join us. He came along and I liked him. We went out on our own soon afterwards and, although I didn’t want to tempt fate, I knew from the start that I was going to fall deeply in love with him. He was on his year out from doing a construction management degree and I thought it was healthy that he was not into athletics. There are a few couples within the sport, but I like a release, and when I see my friends I want to know how they are doing.
    I stayed put in Sheffield, but I still wanted to leave home. I knew that halls of residence would be far too distracting and could derail my ambitions, so I moved in with Hannah, one of the other girls in Chell’s group.
    I was still struggling for money. My great uncle, Grandad’s sister’s husband, Uncle Terry, realized that and helped me out by buying me a car, which meant I could get to training and competitions, without having to rely on my parents and Grandad. I took out a student loan, but that was going on tuition fees and books, so I got a job on the reception at the Virgin Active gym. I hated it as much as my previous part-time jobs. There had been an ill-fated spell working as a waitress in a city hotel. That ended badly when I spilt gravy all over one of the guests. The chefs also persuaded me that I had made the right choice in not pursuing that as a career as they were rude and horrible, terrorizing the waitresses and never accepting that anything could ever be their fault. I also took a job at Pizza Hut. Charlotte and I went in to pick up a pizza one day and saw some job openings and thought it would be fun so we applied. Alas, it was not quite as much fun as we had thought as we greased pans, took phone orders and tried to ignore some of the men who worked there and were a bit strange. The upside was we did get free pizzas after every shift. It was some time before I realized this might not be ideal when trying to pursue an athletics career.
    I had got some money together, although some of it was for one last blow-out before university, and so in the summer of 2004 six of us went to San Antonio, the party capital of Ibiza, before we parted ways. Andy was worried about me going but had no need to be, even though it quickly descended into carnage and a series of rows so bad that I honestly did not think any of us would ever speak to each other again. However, amid the strops and the foam that engulfed the dance floor at Pacha, there was one significant fact about that holiday that stuck in my memory. It came when I picked up a newspaper and saw a picture of Kelly Sotherton, the British heptathlete, receiving her bronze medal at the Athens Olympics which were taking place at the same time. Her coach, Charles van Commenee, had branded her a wimp and reduced her to tears for not getting the silver medal. I got ready for another night’s clubbing and could not imagine that both of those people would have roles to play in my own Olympic journey.
    I chose to study psychology. I was particularly interested in social psychology and how people reacted to one another. A number of famous studies captured my imagination. One of them was the controversial Milgram experiment where ordinary people believed they were giving huge electric shocks to innocent people. The theory was