30 December 2023 , 13:52
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Olympic legend Jessica Ennis-Hill has tipped US sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson for stardom at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Ennis-Hill, who won gold in the heptathlon at the London Games 11 years ago, expressed her excitement for the next Olympic Games and highlighted Richardson as a potential star. Ennis-Hill told Mirror US that Richardson, the reigning 100m world champion, has "come out and shown a new level of class and I'm excited to see how she rivals the Jamaicans."
The American sprinter secured an unlikely victory in Budapest this past summer, winning the 100m from lane nine and claiming her first gold medal at a major championship. However, she missed the Tokyo Games in 2021 after testing positive for marijuana. The 22-year-old athlete, who also missed a home World Championships in Eugene last year, showed her mettle by defeating Jamaican stars Shelly Ann-Fraser Pryce and Shericka Jackson in Hungary.
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Now, after her first major global victory, she's brimming with confidence to repeat her summer success in seven months, and Ennis-Hill is eager to watch it all happen. "I think there are so many great standout performances from a fantastic World Championships this year who will go to have amazing performances next year," she added. Richardson will face immense pressure to perform again, something Ennis-Hill knows all too well.
In the 2012 Olympics, Ennis-Hill, already a two-time world and European champion, was expected to triumph. The British star rose to the occasion, winning the heptathlon by 306 points and delighting the crowd at East London's Olympic Stadium by clinching the final 800m event. The former track and field star decided to end her illustrious career in October 2016.
She's now enjoying her retirement and has moved into athletics commentary, saying it allows her to stay connected to the sport "from a slightly different perspective and with a lot less pressure." She also runs her own business, a startup called 'Jennis' and recently joined The Players Fund, the UK's first athlete-founded venture capital firm. This fund aims to support new athletes and promote women in venture capital and entrepreneurship. Ennis-Hill said about joining the fund: "I'd heard about the Players Fund and I've kind of been on my own kind of entrepreneurial Journey since retiring.
Ennis-Hill has become a successful businesswoman and entrepreneur since retiring from athletics (Jennis - Jay Kamara)"When this opportunity came to be part of the Players Fund it was just something that I jumped at. It had the massive sports element of who I was in my previous life and my passions and my drives within sport. But it also brought this new world of startups and founders and new businesses and the VC world together. So for me, it was just perfect timing and just a perfect combination to utilize those two areas of my life." Throughout her journey as a businesswoman and entrepreneur, Ennis-Hill found that the lack of representation and diversity were some of the biggest challenges to overcome.
But the Players Fund’s latest group of female athletes, which she is part of, can help to tackle and slowly remove those barriers, making it easier for the next generation. "One thing that I've learned through my own journey and found in the companies is that there's a real lack of female representation and diversity as well," Ennis added. "You have all these amazing companies but you need to have the diversity within the investors and the founders to be able to create these amazing products and for general people not just a one-of-a-kind market."
"And so I think it's really important and it's definitely something we found, pitching to investors in the past, trying to be a black female founder getting investment is often quite challenging. So yeah, I think it's brilliant that you've got a fund like players where there's that diversity and that depth, I think it's really important."
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