KNIGHT Jessie

General
OCCUPATION
She is a primary school teacher at Danetree School in Epsom, England. She previously worked full-time, before moving to three days a week. In early 2021 she took a break from teaching to focus on athletics ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games. "It's so funny because the children protect me. When I am going around and marking their books, if they are swinging on their chair they are really scared that they are going to stub my toe or something. They are so scared of me getting injured, they wrap me up in bubble wrap. It is so lovely that I get to share it with them. Everyone at school is on the journey with me. I make sure they know it is not just, 'Wow, Miss Knight can run really fast'. It's actually, 'Miss Knight works really hard and now it is paying off'. That is good for them to learn." (Instagram profile, 29 Jun 2021; athleticsweekly.com, 11 Feb 2021; bbc.co.uk, 26 Mar 2020)

BREAK AND RETURN
In 2017 she decided to quit athletics to focus on her teaching career. "Your first year of teaching is really tough - you're getting to school at 07:00 and I was working until 22:00. My athletics took a back seat and I didn't want to do it if I couldn't be the best I could be so I made the really sad decision to stop. I'd been doing it since I was eight, so I was really gutted." She made a comeback to the sport in 2019. "There was a hole in my life. I suddenly realised I'd let something go that I was quite good at and I really love. I missed it so much. I think because I had been doing it since I was eight, it just became something that I did, rather than something that I loved doing. Having that time away helped me to realise that if I was going to go back, I had to commit 100% in terms of sleep, diet - and not just turn up to training and go home without really being an athlete." (athleticsweekly.com, 11 Feb 2021; bbc.co.uk, 26 Mar 2020; runblogrun.com, 19 Oct 2020; telegraph.co.uk, 21 Feb 2020)