sport news 'I just babbled at her!': Niamh Emerson on meeting Jessica Ennis-Hill

With 500 days to go until the Tokyo Olympics, one of Britain's most promising young athletes is discussing the art of keeping a cool head in exciting moments. The trick, Niamh Emerson explains, is to take how she responded to meeting Jessica Ennis-Hill and then do the exact opposite.

She picks up the amusing tale, which goes back to December and her chance conversation with a sporting icon.

'It was at Sports Personality of the Year,' Emerson tells Sportsmail, a blink on from winning pentathlon silver at the European Indoors and setting a teenage world record in the process.

Niamh Emerson (R) poses with Jessica Ennis-Hill at the Sports Personality of the Year awards

Niamh Emerson (R) poses with Jessica Ennis-Hill at the Sports Personality of the Year awards

Emerson met her sporting hero when she was younger but this was their first conversation

Emerson met her sporting hero when she was younger but this was their first conversation 

'I had actually met her once before when I was 12 or 13 and had my photo with her, but this was my first conversation with her.

'I was just standing around with one of the girls from the team, Morgan Lake, and then noticed Jess coming over because she knows Morgan.

'Next thing she says, "Hello Niamh", and starts talking to me. I was like, "Hi, Jessica Ennis". I couldn't honestly believe what was happening and just sort of babbled at her.

'After a while, once she had gone, I actually went after her and asked if there was any way I might be able to sit down with her one day to pick her brain. She gave me her number and that's when I started getting daft again.' Emerson shakes her head at the memory of what happened next.

'I remember coming home from Sports Personality and waving my phone at my friends, saying, "Look whose number I have", and one of the first things one of them said was, "Watch you dial it by mistake at some point".

'Obviously that is what I did. I'd had this message from her and I was staring at my phone, trying to be all cool and leave it 10 minutes, not to reply after a split second, and then I somehow hit the video call button on WhatsApp. I'm there frantically hanging up after it's started to ring.

'Honestly, it's such a me thing to do - I never do anything smoothly. Never. So yeah, when it comes to keeping cool, don't do that.'

Thankfully, when it comes to running, throwing and jumping, this 19-year-old is rated by those inside the British Athletics set-up as among the most composed performers in the team.

More than that, there is a cautious optimism that the latest offering from the great British multi-eventing production line will live up to the success of what has gone before, from Denise Lewis to Ennis-Hill, Kelly Sotherton and Katarina Johnson-Thompson.

It is far too early for bold predictions and comparisons, but equally it is impossible to ignore what has happened in the past 11 months, taking in a Commonwealth Games bronze medal aged 18, gold at the World Junior championships and her recent pentathlon silver at the European Indoors.

It was that latter achievement which ranks highest, considering she set personal bests in all five disciplines and recorded the highest ever score for a teenager in finishing second to Johnson-Thompson. It was only her second appearance in a British vest.

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