Ennis takes heart from Armitstead ahead of London bow

The Sheffield heptathlete is one of the nation’s big hopes for Olympic gold in the marquee track and field events and is hottly tipped to stand atop the medal podium come Saturday night.

She begins her quest in the Olympic Stadium tomorrow morning with the nation backing her all the way in the seven-discipline event.

She arrived in the athletes village with the rest of the squad on Tuesday, after a two-week training camp in Portugal.

While there she watched her fellow Yorkshirewoman Armitstead win Britain’s first medal of the Games on The Mall.

“I really enjoyed watching Lizzie,” said Ennis, 26, who also believes the gold medal won by Heather Stanning and Helen Glover in the rowing yesterday will have further boosted the confidence of Team GB.

“It was an amazing race and seeing Lizzie interviewed at the end you saw how happy she was with her silver medal.

“And it was great to see that first gold medal (Stanning and Glover).

“Now we’ve got it, hopefully it will inspire the rest of the team to keep pushing on and take more gold medals which we can definitely do.”

Ennis got her first taste of the completed Olympic Stadium yesterday before she steps out into it tomorrow morning for the first event ot the heptathlon.

She will be greeted by 80,000 expectant, screaming fans and was keen to continue a pre-championship tradition of acclimatising herself to her surroundings to ensure she does not get overawed on the crucial first day of competition.

“I had only been to the stadium once when it was just a shell, so went into it today, just walking through the different areas where I will be competing and getting familiar with it,” said the 2009 world champion.

“It’s something I normally do before a major championships, get familiar with the route I will be walking out onto the track, the combined events room, and it looks really great so I am looking forward to getting out there and competing for real now.”

The 100m hurdles, one of her strongest disciplines, is up first for Ennis tomorrow morning, followed by the high jump and then the shot put and 200m in the evening.