JESSICA Ennis-Hill had to settle for a silver medal at the Rio Olympics this summer but she will forever be the golden girl of British athletics. Tributes flooded in for the 30-year-old heptathlete yesterday after she called time on her extraordinary career, just as she had hinted in Brazil.
Ennis-Hill might have finished 35 points behind Nafissatou Thiam at Rio 2016 but that did little to diminish her status as a national treasure. While this native of Sheffield, then known as just plain Ennis, is best known for living up to her billing as the poster girl of London 2012 by kick-starting Britain's glory run on 'Super Saturday', equally impressive was the manner in which she managed to take serious injury and childbirth in her stride as she racked up the second of her two world championship wins in 2015. Indeed, the only minor downside of the arrival of her young son Reggie was that the timing of it prevented the Scottish crowd from seeing her in action at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
It was little wonder then that the great and good of world sport were queuing up to throw garlands in her direction after she announced on Instagram that she had reached "one of the toughest decisions" she had ever had to make. While the move will allow her to spend more time with Reggie, it is doubtful that we have heard the last of Ennis-Hill, an impressive speaker who has already been invited to be a patron of the Women In Sport charity.
"Amazing memories...from my first world title in Berlin 2009 to Rio 2016 I'm so fortunate to have had such an amazing career within the sport I love and this has been one of the toughest decisions I've had to make," she wrote on Instagram. "But I know that retiring now is right. I've always said I want to leave my sport on a high and have no regrets and I can truly say that.
"I want to thank my family and incredible team who have spent so much of their time supporting me and enabling me to achieve my dreams. Also a huge thank you to all those people who have supported and followed my career over the years x."
The main one of these is Toni Minichiello, who has coached Ennis-Hill from the age of 13. He said she had made her decision at the right time. "Many sports people hold on too long," he said. "Jess has managed to avoid walking out of the stadium after failing a qualifying round. She's walking out of the stadium by stepping off the podium. She's one of our sporting greats. It seems fitting this way.
"For an athlete to work from the ages of 13 to 30 and then win an Olympic medal is considered a significant achievement," he added. "For an athlete to come back from a serious injury and win a World Championship is classed as outstanding. To win gold at a home Olympics whilst carrying the expectations of a nation on your shoulders is celebrated as remarkable. To have a baby and become World Champion a year later makes you one of a very small group of elite athletes. To do all four in your career? It’s off the scale. The best ever? I’d say that’s more like it.”
Sir Chris Hoy led the list of tributes on Twitter. "Many congratulations @J_Ennis on all you've achieved, welcome to the pipe and slippers club!"
Ennis-Hill, who would have been world class simply as an 100m hurdler, belongs to a long, distinguished line of British heptathletes including Kelly Sotherton and Denise Lewis. Katarina Johnson-Thompson, to whom the baton is perhaps being passed, tweeted: "A sad day for athletics! A real inspiration to me and so many others. Well done on a incredible career @J_Ennis".
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