Steve Backley believes Jessica Ennis dreams of winning London 2012 gold are out of her hands, although backing the former world champion to overcome her javelin frailties this summer. Jessica, the top poster girl of this summer’s Games, has surrender two world titles in less than a year, losing to heptathlete Tatyana Chernova at last year’s World Championships.
Jessica has insist she will not press the panic button and has a chance to avenge her two rivals at next month’s IAAF Hypo-Meeting heptathlon in Gotzis, where she bids for a hat-trick of consecutive titles, with Chernova 251 points adrift last year. However, with the former world youth and less important winner and Olympic bronze medalist Chernova, 24, seemingly past her troubles of stringing together two solid days and supremacy Olympic champion Dobrynska apparently back to her best; the complexity of topping the London 2012 podium has become clearer than ever.
Ennis confront is not going to be Jess. Whether Jess can take gold or not is out of her hands I believe,said Backley.She is a hard to consider athlete, she delivers under pressure, she knows how to fight, and we saw in Daegu that she puts up a mean fight when things are not going her way.But the difficulty for her is that you have got a young star like Tatyana Chernova and the knowledgeable Nataliya Dobrynska,who we saw in the indoors is always good in Olympic year.
Jessica, 26, defeated Chernova on a head-to-head basis at the 2011 World contest winning five out of seven events but her best javelin throw of 39.95 meters was exactly 13 meters shy of Chernova, costing her 251 points.It ultimately accounted for her loss with a final 149 point shortage with the Russian able to cross the line third and behind winner Ennis in the final 800m event to secure victory.
Yet former javelin world record holder Backley believes it was a vital knowledge for Ennis to go through, and one that could guide her back to golden glory in four months time after some significant fine-tuning.With javelin, you need both the usual talent and the enthusiasm to work hard on it, he added.
Jess has got both, but it is not her most satisfied event and she does it very much by being taught; it is not a flair. So it is a tackle and it needs a bit of work.But I have no doubt that is what she has been doing this winter within the hands of her trainer Mick Hill. He will be teaching and coaching her, and positively it stands up under pressure.