Britain’s Olympic silver medallist Jessica Ennis-Hill should “take time” to consider her future, her coach Toni Minichiello has said.
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Ennis-Hill needed to beat Thiam by almost 10 seconds in the closing 800m but Thiam, who produced five personal bests from seven events, managed to pace her run well and eventually prevailed by a total of 35 points.
The champion from the 2012 London Olympic Games and pre-Games favourite, Ennis-Hill, 30, finished with a total point tally of 6,775 to beat Canada’s Brianne Theisen-Eaton into the silver-medal position by 122 points.
But she may find it hard to walk away from a chance to go for the top spot and retain her crown at the World Championships next year in London – the sight of that famous night four years ago when Ennis-Hill cemented her place in the hearts and minds of the British public.
“I think it’s a mix of thinking back to the last few years”, she said.
“This is my last Olympics, and it’s unusual knowing I won’t be at another major championships like these”, Ennis-Hill said.
“I have got to go away now and make a big decision as to what I do”.
Two years after the birth of her son Reggie, the Sheffield athlete accepted her competition in Rio might have been her farewell.
“When he said 10 seconds I thought “That is so much” but I just ran hard like I always do in the 800m and just tried to see what I could do. She’s had two great days and she wasn’t going to give that up”.
Ennis-Hill, who became a mother previous year, had been bidding to become only the third woman to retain an Olympic athletics title after giving birth.
Speaking to BBC Sport, the athlete said: “Yeah, I’m really emotional. She thoroughly deserved that gold medal”.
Asked if Rio “may be the last one”, Ennis-Hill replied: ‘Possibly, yeah.
Looking at the points, an extra 1cm in high jump, 2cm in long jump, 0.5m in javelin and 14cm in shot put would have been enough for Ennis-Hill to win gold.
That handed Ennis-Hill a 72-point overnight lead.
Belgium’s young star Nafissatou Thiam holds a narrow lead of just five points after the 21-year-old produced a personal best of 6.58 metres in Saturday morning’s long jump.
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While she was near the top in three of the next six events, she was slowed down by a 12th-place finish on the shot put and a 17th-place finish on the javelin throw. “So I’m just really proud”. But as we’ve said, we were truly gutted for her – she put her absolute all into the Heptathlon and we think she did deserve to take home the Gold medal. It was insane – we all had four hours sleep last night and we were finishing at, well, I don’t know what time it is now. I’m just very happy with our performances.
