Jessica Ennis-Hill's coach Toni Minichiello has claimed that it is "unfair" to judge the Team GB star by her Olympic gold-winning performance from London 2012 when she lines up in Rio this weekend.
The Sheffield-born heptathlete took the Olympic crown four years ago and set a British record of 6,995 points in the process, but much has changed for Ennis-Hill since then.
An ankle injury forced the heptathlete out of numerous meets, including the British Championships, in the 2013 season, while a year later, she took a step back from training and competing to give birth to her first child - son Reggie.
Ennis-Hill made her comeback in May the following year at the Great City Games in Manchester, and went on to win gold at the World Championships in Beijing.
Considering how the last few years have panned out for the Brit, online bookmaker 888sport has offered evens on Ennis-Hill winning the heptathlon in Rio, which gets underway this Sunday.
Minichiello is not putting pressure on the 30-year-old to come home with gold, but has instead challenged her to reach 'PP PBs' - post-pregnancy personal bests.
"This is an athlete who's older - she's now 30 and not 26 as she was in London, and she's now a mum and both of those factors have to be taken into consideration," ITV News quotes Minichiello as saying. "You're gonna have to do a bit less training because of your age and because of childcare duties, so you have to make the best use of your time.
"I speak of it as 'PP PBs', which is 'post-pregnancy personal bests'. I'm not trying to go back and look at Jess in her prime, training 30 hours a week, most days twice a day. We just can't do that any more, so to draw a parallel between that person and the person now, I think is unfair.
"I made a conscious decision to wipe the slate clean and she starts from zero in every event. I try not to reflect back. She does, and I think that's quite natural, but I don't think it's fair and I don't think it's sensible."
Ennis-Hill's fellow Team GB competitor Katarina Johnson-Thompson is 2/1 to take the gold medal, while Canada's Brianne Theisen-Eaton and Anouk Vetter of the Netherlands are 3/1 and 10/1 respectively.
Danielle Joynson
