BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Jessica Ennis-Hill, CBE born 28 January 1986 is a British track and field athlete specialising in multi-eventing disciplines and 100 metres hurdles. A member of the City of Sheffield Athletic Club, she is the current Olympic heptathlon champion. She is also the former European and world heptathlon champion and the former world indoor pentathlon champion. She is the current British national record holder for the heptathlon, the indoor pentathlon, the high jump and the 100 metres hurdles.
Born in Sheffield, Jessica Ennis is one of two daughters of Vinnie Ennis and Alison Powell, and has a younger sister named Carmel. Her father, originally from Jamaica, is a self-employed painter and
decorator; her mother, a social worker, was born in Derbyshire. Neither of her parents was particularly athletic, but her father did some sprinting at school whilst her mother favoured the high jump. They introduced her to athletics by taking her to a 'Start:Track' event at Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium during the 1996 school summer holidays In later years she joked that her parents took her to the event because "I think my mum and dad wanted me out of the house!" She won her first athletics prize there – a pair of trainers. More importantly, it was there that she met the man who was to become her coach, Toni Minichiello. She took to the sport immediately and joined the City of Sheffield Athletic Club the following year, aged eleven. In November 2000, aged fourteen, she won the Sheffield Federation for School Sports Whitham Award for the best performance by a Sheffield athlete at the National Schools Championships, where she won the high jump competition.Early life and education
Growing up in the Highfield area of Sheffield, Ennis attended Sharrow Primary School and King Ecgbert School in Dore, where she did her GCSEs and stayed on in the sixth form to gain three A-Levels, before going on to study psychology at the University of Sheffield and graduating in 2007 with a 2:2.
Personal life
Ennis lives in Sheffield and has a pet chocolate Labrador Myla. She became engaged to long-term boyfriend Andy Hill on Christmas Eve 2010; they married at the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Hathersage, Derbyshire, on 18 May 2013. After the wedding she announced via social media sites that she would be known as 'Mrs Jessica Ennis-Hill'.
She is a fan of Sheffield United and likes to watch television programmes Big Brother, Sex And The City, Smallville, Heroes and 24.
Ennis is a patron of the Sheffield Children's Hospital charity and of businessman Barrie Wells's sports foundation. She is also an Ambassador for the Jaguar Academy of Sport. She writes a column for The Times newspaper and has been involved in advertising campaigns for Aviva,Powerade, BP, Adidas, Omega watches and Olay 'Essentials', and was featured on the cover of the August 2012 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. In February 2013, Ennis became one of the 'new faces' of Santander UK's advertising campaign.
Athletics career
Coaching and professional support
Ennis's full-time coach is UK Athletics national coach for combined events Antonio 'Toni' Minichiello, who has coached her since she was eleven years old. She also receives specialist javelin coaching from World Championships bronze medallist and European Championships silver medallist Mick Hill. Her other support staff are Ali Rose (physiotherapist), Derry Suter (soft tissue therapist), Steve Ingham (physiologist) and Dr Paul Brice (biomechanicist). She is represented by Jane Cowmeadow and Suzi Stedman at JCCM. Ennis and her support staff are together nicknamed Team Jennis.
Junior competitions and early senior career
Ennis took part in athletics from a young age. She competed in the high jump and pentathlon at the English Schools AAA Junior Girls in 1999, then won the AAA Girls title in the high jump the following year at the age of fourteen, clearing 1.70 metres. In 2001 she was runner-up at the high jump and heptathlon events in the English Schools AAA Intermediate section and won the high jump in 2002 with a jump of 1.80 metres. Ennis established herself as one of Britain's top junior athletes at the AAA U20 Championships in 2003 as she took the indoor pentathlon title and outdoor 100 metres hurdles title.
Ennis competed at the 2003 World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada in July, where after leading at the end of the first day she finished in fifth position with 5,311 points.
The following year Ennis competed in the 2004 World Junior Championships in Grosseto, Italy, where she finished eighth with 5,542 points, again after leading at the end of the first day.
Ennis won two silver medals, in the 100 metres hurdles and the high jump, at the 2004 Commonwealth Youth Games in Bendigo, Australia, held in November and December 2004, and won the heptathlon at the July 2005 European Athletics Junior Championships in Kaunas, Lithuania, with a British junior record score of 5,891 points.
Ennis's first senior international competition was the 2005 Universiade, held in August in İzmir, Turkey, where she won a bronze medal in the heptathlon with a new personal best of 5,910 points, behind winner Lyudmila Blonska and second-placed Simone Oberer.
One of Ennis's first victories as a senior came in February 2004, when she was eighteen years old. She won the 60 metres hurdles at the Northern Senior Indoor Championships in a time of 8.60 seconds. Two weeks earlier she had won three Northern Junior Indoor Championship titles: the 60 metres sprint, the 60 metres hurdles and the high jump. Also in February Ennis finished third in the 60 metres hurdles at the AAA Indoor Championships in Sheffield in a time of 8.43 seconds.
At the July 2005 AAA Championships Ennis competed in the 100 metres hurdles, in which she recorded a personal best time of 13.26 seconds, and the high jump.
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