Who is Jessica Ennis-Hill? Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, Dame and BBC Olympics 2024 presenter
DAME JESSICA ENNIS-HILL is one of the most decorated British sportswomen in history – having conquered the world as a heptathlete and winning multiple medals.
As a professional, she has won gold medals in the Olympics, the World Championships, the World Indoor Championships and the European Championships.
She retired after the Rio 2016 Olympics, leaving behind a glittering career that brought her vast amounts of success.
Here’s everything you need to know about her.
How old is Jessica Ennis-Hill? What’s her background?
The superstar was born on January 28, 1986 in Sheffield, where she is one of two daughters to father from Jamaica, and a mother from England.
She is aged 38.
Both her parents had an interest in athletics – her dad was a keen sprinter, whilst her mum preferred the high jump – and they introduced her to the sport as a child taking her to the Don Valley Stadium to watch events.
She ended up joining the City of Sheffield and Dearne Athletic Club aged 11 where she excelled, and attended King Ecgbert School, before graduating from the University of Sheffield with a 2:2 in psychology.
What was Jessica Ennis-Hill’s career record?
In junior competitions, Jessica won two silver medals in the 2004 Commonwealth Youth Games, and won in the heptathlon at the 2005 European Athletics Junior Championships.
Her professional career took off when she took home a bronze in the Commonwealth Games in heptathlon in 2006 at Melbourne.
In 2009 she won the gold medal in World Championships, a whopping 238 points ahead of Jennifer Oeser in second, and in 2010 took won the gold in the World Indoor Championships and the European Championships.
In 2011 she won a silver medal in the World Championships, although this has now been upgraded to a gold medal after Tatyana Chernova was proved of being a drugs cheat. She also won at the World Championships in 2015.
After winning a silver medal at the 2012 World Indoor Championships Jessica cemented herself in Great British folklore after picking home the gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
However, she couldn’t defend her title in Rio last year as she had to settle for a silver.
When did Jess get married? How many children do they have?
In 2013, Jessica Ennis married Andy Hill in Derbyshire, and announced she would be known as Jessica Ennis-Hill.
She was forced to withdraw from participation in the 2014 Commonwealth Games as she was pregnant with her first child – her son Reggie was born in July 2014.
On March 16 Jess announced she’s pregnant again on Instagram with a photograph of Reggie holding a book entitled “I’m Going to be a Big Brother!”.
She wrote: “Someone’s going to be a big brother Another little Ennis-Hill on the way. So happy.”
She gave birth to to her daughter Olivia on September 23, 2017.
What does DBE mean?
In 2017, Ennis-Hill was appointed as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours list.
The 38-year-old was awarded the second highest class for her services to athletics in which she has achieved so much success.
What has Jessica Ennis-Hill done since retiring from athletics?
Ennis-Hill is regularly seen on BBC Sport where she covers athletics – she is in Paris for the 2024 Olympics and in 2023 was part of the team for the World Championships.
The Olympic great stayed away from TV shows for a long time to raise her children.
However, she has recently appeared on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel and has signed up to the Who Do You Think You Are? reboot.
Ennis-Hill also does a lot of charity work and has helped raise funds for Children in Need.
On her Instagram page – which has over 400k followers – she also posts about health and fitness.