Jessica Ennis-Hill

Jessica Ennis-Hill

  2005 Summer Universiade, Izmir: heptathlon bronze medal (5,910 points).

When Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Britain's three-times world champion and Olympic gold and silver medallist in the heptathlon, was just 19, she made her mark in her first senior international competition - the 2005 Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey.

Ennis, as she was before her marriage, arrived as a hugely promising heptathlete who had significant experience at junior level. 

In 2003 she finished fifth at the World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada, and the following year she was eighth in the World Junior Athletics Championships in Grossetto, Italy.

Later that year she won two silver medals, in the 100 metres hurdles and high jump, at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Bendigo, Australia.

In 2005 she became European junior heptathlon champion in Kaunas, Lithuania, with a British junior record score of 5,891 points.

In Izmir she raised her personal best to 5,910 points to take bronze behind Ukraine's Lyudmila Blonska - who was stripped of Olympic silver at the 2008 Beijing Games and banned for life for what was a second doping offence - and Switzerland's Simone Oberer.

While Blonska was heading for ignominy in Beijing, Ennis didn't even make it to China, having suffered a stress fracture in her foot while competing in her main preparation meeting for the Games, the annual competition in Gotzis.

By that point Ennis had advanced to the point of being a clear Olympic medal contender.

At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne she took bronze in a competition won by Britain's Olympic bronze medallist Kelly Sotherton and, in 2007, she made a global breakthrough by earning bronze at the World Championships in Osaka.

She had taken European indoor silver earlier that year, behind the Olympic and world champion Carolina Kluft of Sweden.

After a 12-month injury lay-off, she returned to claim her first world title in 2009 in Berlin, and she added world indoor and European gold the following year.

At the 2011 World Championships in Daegu a calamitous javelin throw - always her weakness - saw her beaten by Russia's Tatyana Chernova. 

The home 2012 Olympics in London saw Ennis respond to the enormous weight of public expectation by securing the gold medal, part of an extraordinary sequence of three home athletics victories on what became to be known as "Super Saturday". The other golds were earned by Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres and Greg Rutherford in the long jump.

Ennis, along with other British 2012 Olympic gold medal winners, was featured on a special Royal Mail commemorative postage stamp and had a post box on the corner of Division Street and Holly Street in her native Sheffield painted gold in her honour.

Injuries and then pregnancy put her career on pause, but she returned to earn the world title in Beijing in 2015.

Ennis-Hill, as she now was, pushed on to defend her Olympic title at Rio 2016, and was rewarded for a characteristically disciplined performance by taking silver behind Belgium's rising star Nafissitou Thiam.

Having retired after the Rio Olympics, Ennis-Hill became the owner of a third World Championship gold medal - equalling Kluft's record in the event - when Chernova was retrospectively disqualified from Daegu for a doping offence discovered by reexamination of a sample.

Jessica Ennis won Olympic gold at London 2012 after previously making her mark at the Universiade ©Getty Images
Jessica Ennis won Olympic gold at London 2012 after previously making her mark at the Universiade ©Getty Images











Britain’s "Super Saturday" becomes "Satisfactory Saturday" as Farah, Ennis-Hill and Rutherford take gold, silver and bronze

Britain’s "Super Saturday" becomes "Satisfactory Saturday" as Farah, Ennis-Hill and Rutherford take gold, silver and bronze

British hopes for a re-run of "Super Saturday" from London 2012 fell short here tonight, but gold for Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres, silver for Jessica Ennis-Hill in the heptathlon and bronze for Greg Rutherford in the long jump surely constituted a "Satisfactory Saturday" at the least.