Nana Djimou perfects her tennis serve | 19.09.2012

European heptathlon champion Ida Antoinette Nana Djimou.

It has been an interesting year for Ida Antoinette Nana Djimou. In June she won her first big outdoor title at the Helsinki 2012 European Athletics Championships when she was not even sure she wanted to go: "I have good memories of Helsinki because I did not really want to be there," she told the French federation website, athle.com. "But after my first heptathlon at Götzis in May I was not happy. So I decided to do the Europeans and, once there, I was there to win it."

Like most of the heptathletes, the French champion has just emerged from the Decastar meeting where she was in the hunt for the title up until the last event. Though she fell 11 points short, she was not unhappy with her performance: "I am not disappointed because I did not expect to be sufficiently in form. After the first day the aches and pains returned. It was hard because it was only a month after the Games. It was only the strongest mentally who were going to get to the end."

One of the big positives of the competition was her javelin lifetime best of 57.27. That means her best has improved by almost 10 metres in two years? To what does she ascribe this? "It's strange. It's a discipline I don't enjoy in training. But maybe the exercises that we have done during the winter have helped. I have been practising the tennis serve with a 1.5kg weight!"

"I am happy with my season. It is the first time I have had a season like this. But I was a bit disappointed with my performance at the Olympics because I set a personal best, but still felt as though I had not taken everything out of myself. It was a strange sensation."

Nana Djimou finished sixth in London in 6576, but she is clear on where there is room for improvement: "I need consistency in the long jump. With 6.13m I lost too many points in London. Last winter I changed to the scissors technique, but after an injury in the spring my coach and I decided to go back to the classic technique. Maybe that has played a part in affecting my consistency."

With the world championship year approaching, Nana Djimou has several aims, one of which is to beat the French record of 6889 held by Eunice Barber, a daunting task given the 300-point gulf between their scores, but she has a plan: "I want to work on each discipline as though it is a speciality," said Nana Djimou. "At the moment there are certain disciplines where I possibly have not been serious enough in training. The 800m, for example, I stop when I feel bad or the javelin, I stop when I get fed up. And if I beat her score, I am sure to get a medal in Moscow."