How bribery set heptathlete Jessica Ennis on the road to Beijing

Recalling her development as a teenager, the heptathlete says: "He'd give me a pound for a personal best or maybe a fiver for a title."

Flying high: Jessica Ennis

She did so well that grandad Rod Powell joked: "You're bankrupting me."

Even her coach Tony Minichiello chides her, saying: "You probably wouldn't still be in the sport if he hadn't bribed you."

Her grandad remains her biggest supporter. He will be a spectator along with her parents in the Austrian town of Gotzis this weekend when the world No 4 makes her debut at a meeting to which an invitation counts as final confirmation of a multi-event athlete's arrival on the international scene.

The Hypo meeting is a dress rehearsal for the Olympics in Beijing. Ennis should have been facing Kelly Sotherton but the British No 1- last year's world bronze medallist - suffered a kidney infection while in Italy this month and has withdrawn.

Ennis, 22, has no need for bribes now. She knows better than anybody the importance of the only heptathlon she will contest before Beijing as a measurement of progress made in the nine months since she finished one place behind Sotherton in the World Championships.

The key since last autumn is that she and Minichiello have been involved in the sport full time, Ennis packing away her books after graduating with a psychology degree from the University of Sheffield and Minichiello quitting his nine-to-five job in a Social Security office to coach professionally.

"Put the two things together and it has made an enormous difference," he admits.

Training has increased but so has the time for resting and socialising. "I don't know how I managed before," she says.

She sees training now as a job separate from the rest of her life and it helps that the boyfriend with whom she shares a home is not an athlete.

"He's very supportive but it means we have other things to talk about," she says. Minichiello maintains: "It's important she feels she can go home from it, like you do from an office. It's about state of mind, life balance."

Improvement in the various disciplines has seen her add almost five metres in the javelin and a metre in the shot.

Had she thrown those distances at the World Championships in Osaka, she and not Sothertonwould have taken the bronze.

This weekend she is anxious to throw well. "A personal best would be nice," she adds as she aims to better the 6,469pts she achieved in Japan.

"Finishing fourth last year was close and I didn't expect it, so it gave me a taste and more motivation to come out and win a medal in Beijing."

At least Ennis will not have to face Carolina Kluft, the Olympic champion who has decided not to defend her title.

Ennis understands why Kluft has lost the will to compete because of winning so often.

"I'd love to be in that position one day," she says. "It's a tough event. If you don't have the motivation, it's impossible."

Even now Ennis still hates one of the seven events - the 800m. She has worked with a sports psychologist at Sheffield's English Institute of Sport "to drive out the negative thoughts".

She says: "Nobody likes it. You can see it in everybody's faces. Even Kluft says: 'Here comes the worst bit', which makes me feel better."

Ennis knows she needs to run under 2min 10sec in Beijing to have a chance of a medal. Is she counting down the days? "I know the date but I don't want the constant reminder of how many days it is. I know what I have to do by then. That's enough."