I’m not competing any more, but I don’t want to disappear
With her heptathlon days behind her, Jessica Ennis-Hill tells Radhika Sanghani that she can finally focus on her family
Six months into her retirement, Jessica Ennis-Hill is almost unrecognisable from the athlete I met during Rio 2016. It is not her impressive physique that has changed – though she insists she is no longer “ultra six-packed up” – but her demeanour. Gone is the tension and single-minded ambition that ran through our last interviews; in its place is carefree laughter and plenty of smiles.
“Retirement is very stressful,” she jokes. “No, not really. I’ve adapted to retirement very quickly. When you’re training and competing all the time, you always have that element of stress and worry. You’re constantly working towards something, so you’re always a bit stressed and anxious, but I don’t have that now.
“I don’t have that Sunday feeling thinking ‘I’ve got to get up for that session’, or how normal people with normal jobs feel about going to work. It’s so nice.”
Dame Jessica – she was awarded the title in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list – made the decision to withdraw from athletics after winning a silver medal in Rio, two years after having her son, Reggie. She retired as a three-times world champion, 2010 European champion and Olympic gold medallist following her remarkable success in London 2012.
“I went out on a high,” agrees the former heptathlete, who turned 31 yesterday. “It was a natural endpoint to my career. Deep down I always thought ending after an Olympics was, for me, the right time.”
Her decision was also influenced by motherhood – both that of her son and her plans to have another child. “It was great to have Reggie and for him to be a part of it, and to achieve what I had having had him,” she says. “But also, having been in the sport for the time I’ve been in it, the thought of competing again was like, I don’t know how I’ll do it. I definitely want more kids – but maybe just one more.”
Apart from Dame Jess, only two female athletes have ever given birth and retained their title in the same Olympic cycle – and neither competed in events as physically demanding as the seven tough disciplines of the heptathlon.
“I did think on so many occasions, ‘What am I doing? I don’t want to do this,’” she admits. “But I would have regretted not coming back. If I’d not even given it a go, I would have wondered what could have happened. I think I would have felt a loss of identity, and not felt as fulfilled.”
In typical Dame Jess fashion, she was spurred on by naysayers’ beliefs that she would not be able to do it. “People were very ‘Oh, she’ll never come back’, ‘You’re done now’. Even people quite close to me said ‘No, she won’t.’ It really annoyed me that people thought I couldn’t, so I wanted to.
“But equally you don’t know how you’ll feel when you have your first child, and you don’t realise how much of a full-time job it is until you have your kids.” People who dismiss stay-athome mothers “make me laugh”, she says, “because it’s so challenging, it’s so hard. Raising your son or daughter to be a really well-rounded person is, like, the hardest job ever.”
Even though Dame Jess is still involved in sports – we are meeting before she is due to go on Blue Peter to announce a competition she will judge, inviting six- to 15-year-olds to design a mascot for the 2017 London World Athletics Championships – her job title is no longer “heptathlete” but, simply, mum. “It’s nice because I’m at home a lot and with Reggie loads, but I can dip in and out and work on my own terms, too,” she says. “I know some women feel a loss of identity, but for me it all happened at the right time. If it hadn’t, there would have been a feeling of, ‘Oh, I wish it had gone on a bit longer’, but it was perfect – the transition felt smooth.”
She is now Reggie’s primary carer, while her husband Andy, whom she married in 2013, is free to continue his career in construction. “He’s always worked full-time, and adapted things around my training and competitions and working to support me,” acknowledges Dame Jess, adding that her partner of 12 years is “the reason I’ve been so successful”.
Things have shifted, however. “He gets all the support around his career now,” she says. “He leaves the house at 6am every morning and is back at 6pm at night. He works incredibly hard, but that’s why I love him, because he’s so ambitious and hard-working.”
Dame Jess’s days have also been completely transformed. She is no longer subjected to gruelling training sessions; instead, her time is now taken up publicising her new children’s book, out later this year – “Reggie loves reading, so I thought it would be a nice enjoyable thing to do” – going to
‘All my friends want to know how to get abs. Maybe I should set up an abs class’
yoga, swimming, and indulging in celebrity reality TV shows.
“Obviously Reggie is my whole focus now, making sure he’s developing the way he should and having everything he needs,” she says. “Now he’s coming up to three, I want to make sure he’s involved in the sportier side of things.”
She laughs as she tells me how the toddler joins in with her circuits at home, trying to do sit-ups and lifting his T-shirt to point at his belly, saying: “Look, Mummy, six-pack.” Yet she is also conscious of becoming a “pushy mum”, loath to subject Reggie to the same high expectations, perfectionism and determination she held herself to while competing.
“It’s just how I am and the character I am,” she admits. “I find it hard to lose that and I’ll take that into whatever I do. I’ll want to do whatever I do perfectly. I do have quite high standards.
“I don’t think I’m like that with him at all. I just want to gently encourage him into trying different sports, as my parents did with me, and I think that’s why I’m really successful. My mum is really chilled and my dad is as well. I’m going to be relaxed and hope Reggie enjoys sports in some way. If he doesn’t it doesn’t really matter – I just want him to have a go.”
She is also now ready to focus on her thousands of fans, and the generations of young women who look up to her. Even though she has turned down requests to appear on the reality TV shows she loves watching, she stresses she does not want to be forgotten.
“I don’t want to disappear but equally I don’t want to be on TV all the time. It’s nice to have a normal home life. But I suppose I feel a bit of a sense of responsibility. I want to keep inspiring athletes and people to stay with sport and live a healthy life.”
She pauses. “All my friends just want to know how to get abs. Maybe I should set up an abs class instead.”