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Olympic fervour runs in family for Jessica: VIDEO INTERVIEW
JESSICA ENNIS will have her own personal fan club in China when she attempts to win a gold medal for Great Britain in August's Beijing Olympics.
All the Sheffield heptathlete's closest family will be cheering her on as she competes against the world's best.
Ennis, 22, knows all her Sheffield pals will also be rooting for her at home, watching on TV.
Speaking on video on our thestar.co.uk website, the former King Ecgbert's School girl said: "My mum, my Dad, my grandparents, my boyfriend and my sister will be out in Beijing.
"It will be fantastic having them there, they get a bit of a holiday and just to have them there supporting me will be amazing" she said.
"Dad is an asthmatic and, with the pollution and the climate, it's going to be quite difficult because he suffers quite badly from it,
"But I'm sure he'll get all his checks, and fingers crossed, he should be OK."
Ennis is the British athletics' press pin-up girl. They see her as one of GB's best candidates for a medal.
That pressure is both a positive and a negative, she said.
"Coming fourth (in the World championships) last year, I've (now) put a bit of pressure on myself to do better, there are going to be a lot of good heptathletes competing, the standard is going to be extremely high so I hope to improve on what I did last year.
"I've set myself my own individual targets and to get a medal would be fantastic."
Asked about the pressure of being labelled our greatest medal hope, she admitted: "It's pretty scary.
"But we've got a lot of medal hopes going into Beijing, so the pressure is spread across a number of athletes, but it's nice to be expected to do so well."
Asked if she had a fear of failure, she replied: "I'm more an achiever, I really want to achieve I don't think about failing too much. I think its important not to dwell too much. I am more motivated to achieve than motivated to avoid failure."
She disagrees with suggestions that there is a dearth of world class GB athletes.
"No. I think we're doing really well at the moment think we had a period where a number of athletes retired and moved on, there was not as many senior athletes doing well, but a lot of junior athletes come through and we're going to do pretty well this year and in 2012 as well."
Jess Ennis a member of the Norwich Union GB & NI Team. Norwich Union are the team behind UK Athletics. To find out more and play your part, visit www.joinourteam.com.
CLICK ON THE GREEN PLAY ICON TO WATCH THE INTERVIEW
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Friday 10 February 2012
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