Jessica Ennis, the poster girl for the London 2012, has today brought home a stunning Gold in the Heptathlon to beat former Olympic champion Natalya Dobrynska.
A rising star before Beijing, Jess Ennis had unfinished business on the Olympic stage after an injury to her foot in the build-up to Beijing 2008 ruled her out.
Channelling that disappointment, Jess came back from injury to take gold at both the 2010 European and World Indoor Championships, following this up with silver in the 2011 World Championships and silver again at the 2012 World Indoor Championships to complete a near perfect run of form in anticipation for London2012.
Fulfilling her rise, Jess’s phenomenal achievement today will inspire the generation to come.
Liz Nicholl, Chief Executive of UK Sport, said: “This is what sport is about, Jess has done incredibly well with this result and has created one of those moments in sport which we will all talk about for a long time to come. She came back from a big injury to achieve this so well done Jess!”.
The National Lottery has delivered unprecedented levels of funding to British athletics, working with UK Sport to help UK Athletics provide athletes with comprehensive coaching, sports science and medical support at one of their two National Performance Centres in London (Lee Valley) and Loughborough (University), as well as their five regional centres in Bath, Birmingham, Brunel (London), Sheffield and Manchester. They also run a number of fully supported and staffed warm weather training camps through the year for athletes and their coaches.
Jessica Ennis' coach Toni Minichiello was one of the early beneficiaries of one of UK Sport's high performance coaching development programmes. Toni graduated from the Elite Coach programme in 2009; the programme had fostered in him the skills he needed to lead a multidisciplinary team of experts in performance analysis, conditioning and rehabilitation, who were crucial to Jessica's recovery from a serious foot injury in 2008 to World Championships glory in 2009.