Ennis-Hill, Jessica

Jessica Ennis-Hill, in full Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, née Jessica Ennis, (born January 28, 1986, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England), English track-and-field athlete who, at the 2012 London Olympic Games, won a gold medal in the heptathlon.

In 1996 Ennis participated in her first track-and-field competition. Her first major international heptathlon victory was in 2005 at the European junior championships. In 2006 she won a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games and placed eighth at the European championships. A fourth-place finish at the 2007 IAAF world championships raised Ennis’s prospects for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but she suffered stress fractures in her right foot that kept her from the Games that year. Meanwhile, she completed a degree in psychology (2007) at the University of Sheffield.

After the injury Ennis switched to a left-leg takeoff for the high jump and the long jump. The adjustment helped her take the gold at the 2009 world championships. Although Ennis won the 2010 European championships with 6,823 points, she lost the world title and the top ranking in 2011 to Russian rival Tatyana Chernova. (However, Ennis was awarded the world championship in 2016 after Chernova was stripped of her title for having doped during the 2011 season.) Ennis rebounded the following year at the London Games. In addition to setting a world heptathlon record (12.54 seconds) in the 100-metre hurdles, Ennis, with her height of 1.26 metres (5 feet 4 ¹/₂ inches), became the shortest woman to win a gold medal in the seven-event competition. In 2013 Ennis was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and married Andy Hill.

Ennis-Hill missed the 2014 track season, having given birth to a son. She returned in 2015 and qualified for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, where she won a silver medal in the heptathlon. Ennis-Hill retired from athletics shortly after the Rio Games. The following year she was formally made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).