Michelle Jenneke arrives at her first Olympics as a fully fledged star. But what’s she really like?
YOU’VE all watched Michelle ‘Jiggling’ Jenneke in action. But there’s plenty about her you don’t know as she arrives in Rio for her first Olympics.
AT home Nicky Jenneke’s daughter has split personalities. When Nicky’s being a mum it’s “Shelly” but when they get down to business it’s “Michelle Jenneke”.
And lately, there has been plenty of business.
The Aussie athlete who garnered world fame as the dancing hurdler back in 2012 is about to run at her first Olympics. Amazingly she arrived in Rio in billboard form before entering the village from training camp in the US. A mega campaign with Coca-Cola, shot in Barcelona, is the latest step up the fame ladder and testimony to the shrewd work of her manager and mum Nicky.
It’s hard to recall another athlete whose celebrity is so out of step with her athletic achievements — perhaps Anna Kournikova, the former Russian pro tennis player who seduced the world without winning a WTA title.
So who is “Michelle Jenneke” and who is “Shelly”? The person best placed to tell us is Nicky.
OLYMPIC DREAM? THERE WASN’T ONE
“Shelly was never one of those kids who dreamt of going to the Olympics,” says Nicky.
“Athletics has always been her fun thing. She’s never been — and I put quotes around this — a ‘serious’ athlete. Athletics has always been something that she does, it’s not who she is.
“I remember the president of Cherrybrook Little Athletics told her when she was about 11 that she was showing a lot of promise and they talked about the Olympics.
“She told him: ‘no, I don’t think I’d like to go to the Olympics’. And he said …’and if they ask you to go …?’ . She said: ‘I’d probably say ‘no thank you’.”
Nicky understands Michelle’s attitude was out of step with most young kids.
“One of her best mates Jenny Blundell, who has been selected for the 1500m in Rio, grew up with Shelly,” says Nicky.
“She has, since she was about seven years old, had a picture on her door that says, basically, ‘the Olympics is my dream’. Shelly was not like that.
“She never liked crowds, she didn’t like competing. There were a lot of other things on her plate as well. Also, as she got older she realised very few people would go to the Olympics and she doesn’t think of herself as anyone too special.”
WHO IS “SHELLY”?
“She’s many things: First of all she’s a human being,” says Nicky.
“She’s very balanced and I think more so now the athletics has started to emerge as the most dominant part of her life.
“She was always very active — did 13 years of dancing, 13 years of soccer, tried volleyball, European handball, gymnastics, squad swimming. She was a busy little thing that rocked around and did all sorts of things. She’s very academic as well and has a huge amount of time for family and friends.
“She’s never shut the door on her friends. She trains in a really big squad and loves it that way, loves to have a lot of fun.”
Nicky organises visits to grassroots clubs with Michelle. She sees the nourishment her daughter gains from the visits, from being around fans.
“She loves energy she gets from people,” says Nicky. “When she’s out at a meet or a function she’ll stay around afterwards. People give their babies to her to cuddle … she’s in her element.
“Her joy is going to schools and meeting with kids. She loves getting people involved in athletics, and has a great passion for children and I can say, as her mum, she’ll make a fantastic mummy.”
WHO IS “MICHELLE JENNEKE”?
Ever since her viral video moments the requests and endorsements have steadily flowed to Michelle’s door. She’s a natural, healthy talent, but that doesn’t mean it comes naturally.
“It’s something she’s always struggled with,” says Nicky. “I know in the beginning she questioned why people wanted to see her. To her that was very odd. She wasn’t greatly popular at school and she’s a humble and private person so the whole aspect of being popular is strange to her.
“And she’s a nice looking girl, but she never thought ‘I’m a sexy thing.’
“Sometimes she enjoys the commitments more than others — like appearing on Top Gear. She did the Coke campaign for the Olympics and got to go to Barcelona, she loved that.
“But if it’s dry she doesn’t enjoy it. She says no to a lot more endorsements than she says yes to. She doesn’t want to endorse things she doesn’t believe in.”
‘JIGGLING JENNEKE’ GOES TO AFRICA
Michelle became world wide famous after video was posted of her warm up routine at the world junior championships in Barcelona in 2012. She finished fifth in the final — a great result — but completely overshadowed in the public mind by the dance video. It has been streamed 30 million of times and was shown on the Jay Leno show in the US.
“We were sitting at home with some of her mates having watched the world juniors. People were hanging around I hadn’t gone with her that time because I was unwell so I just packed the house with a load of people and called it Camp Barcelona,” says Nicky.
“Someone said ‘have you seen this thing with Shelly? It’s getting thousands of hits’. I was getting messages saying your daughter’s going viral, and to be honest I didn’t know what going viral meant!
“Michelle was on holiday in Europe with her father and she found out about it when it had done 60,000 views. She was blown away, like ‘wow that’s enough people to fill a stadium.’
“She was laughing, she thought it was hysterical people had any interest. She’d been doing it for a few years before that so for us it wasn’t anything new. We were amused and I think we are still amused.”
Plenty of athletes would find the focus on something other than their sporting ability annoying. Or at least pretend it was. But Michelle was never bothered if people took her seriously as an athlete in the first place.
“It was not a publicity stunt. Because she never really cared if people knew her as an athlete it didn’t override people knowing her as an athlete. If people want to know her as a dancing hurdler and it means athletics in general gets a bigger profile then she’s all for it.
“She spent some time after she ‘went viral’ working [at an orphanage] in Tanzania and that was a great learning experience for her, that these people live with absolutely nothing and they don’t complain.
“It consolidated that idea in her head that you can’t control everything. If she makes someone smile by doing her dance that’s great. If she makes someone cringe she’s a great believer in turn your computer off, don’t look.”
WHEN IT’S TIME FOR BUSINESS
Straight after her instant fame Michelle signed a deal with Six Sides Management and the offers were immediate. Nicky says it “didn’t work well”, so she took over the job as manager.
She handles the business deals and shapes Michelle’s image, taking control of her Facebook page early on.
“She started to get a lot of very graphic messages from men,” Nicky says. “I do the censorship, she doesn’t need to be looking at that.
The whole commercial side isn’t her favourite part ...
“I prefer being her mum to being her manager. At home Shelley has two distinctive hats. “Michelle Jenneke”, in our house, is the personality. “Shelly” is the daughter, the sibling, the friend, the grandchild. If we’re talking “Michelle Jenneke” then we’re in business mode and we have rules around it. I make appointments with her for the business. We don’t want to cloud the mum-daughter relationship
because we have such a wonderful relationship.
“At times with requests coming through it can create some friction, but we’re great mates.”
The writer is on Twitter @toneharper
Originally published as Michelle Jenneke arrives at her first Olympics as a fully fledged star. But what’s she really like?
‘Never had’: Bruce loses it over Gout Gout
Legendary broadcaster Bruce McAvaney has seen it all in Australian sports but our latest rising athletics star is a different beast.
World champ pleads for TV to not film bottom
An Olympic triathlete is going viral for a desperate plea on live TV after she suffered a mortifying accident in the middle of a race.
Aussie golden girl wows at star-studded night
Australia’s Olympic heroes, sisters Jess and Noemie Fox, have won a prestigious sporting award at a star-studded ceremony in Melbourne.