Great Britain’s Jessica Ennis set a new British heptathlon record as she won the Hypo event in Austria with 6,906 points on this day in 2012.
Ennis set the new record in Gotzis, beating the previous high score of 6,831 set by former Olympic champion Denise Lewis back in 2000.
The victory was Ennis’ third successive win at the event which turned out to be her last heptathlon before she was crowned Olympic champion with gold at London 2012.
Jessica Ennis struck gold at London 2012 after her Gotzis triumph (Owen Humphreys/PA)
(PA Archive)
Following the record win, she said: “I knew I was capable of doing it. It was just a case of putting it together on the day.
“It’s something that’s been at the back of my mind and I wanted to achieve, but I didn’t want to put too much pressure on it.”
The then 26-year-old completed the first day with a score of 4,113 points and began the second day by equalling her personal best of 6.51m in the long jump and then threw a new personal best of 47.11m in the javelin.
Those efforts meant Ennis needed to complete the final event of 800m in two minutes and 14 seconds in order to beat Lewis’ best, and she beat the mark by five seconds to take the record.
After achieving that feat, the Sheffield athlete won gold at London 2012 before getting married – becoming Jessica Ennis-Hill – and taking a break from the sport to give birth to her son Reggie.
She returned in superb fashion to win heptathlon gold at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing before bringing the curtain down on a successful career with a silver medal at Rio 2016.
Source: Independent
