Get the cream
I’m ready for Rio and when 100 per cent healthy I can do anything
with 1.95m? “I have dealt with it emotionally. It is just one of those things,” said the Liverpudlian.
“It is something you have to do yourself, no matter how many positive words you hear from your family and friends or people close to you.
“You don’t really take it all in. It is something you have to come to terms with. With time, everything sort of passes over in life. It was just a case of focusing on training, trying to make myself better and stop dwelling on the past.
“I dwelt on it all winter. At the end of 2015, it was still there. But as soon as 2016 turned up, I thought about what was next, and thought about Rio and the Olympics. That was easy then to look at what is coming up next.” Her display on Saturday was highly significant because it was the first time Ennis-Hill, 30, had been overshadowed in direct competition by her younger rival. The women’s heptathlon promises to be one of the best events of the Olympic athletics programme. Canada’s Brianne TheisenEaton, the world No1, is favourite but Ennis-Hill is determined to become the first track and field athlete to retain an Olympic title while, on her day, KJT is such a threat. Saturday was one of those days. “I feel I’m ready now for Rio,” she said. “I just want to make sure I put everything together. I know I can do it. In the heptathlon, it’s all about the consistency. I head into Rio with no injuries. I came out of the Anniversary Games feeling brilliant.
“I feel like when I’m 100 per cent healthy I can do anything. It’s good that we have two hopeful medallists in one event.
“It’s good for the country as well. In a way, this is an example of the 2012 legacy. I was there, watching Jess four years ago, watching her do something I wanted to happen in my own way. And four years on, it could quite possibly happen for me.
“I wouldn’t call it a rivalry because we didn’t come up together and we haven’t really competed against each that much as I am much younger. But there is a friendship there.”
It remains incredible how Britain has had such an Olympic production line of women multieventers. Mary Rand was the first, winning silver in the pentathlon in Tokyo in 1964 before Dame Mary Peters’ glorious gold eight years later in Munich.
After bronze in the heptathlon in 1996, Denise Lewis became the Olympic champion in Sydney in 2000 and then Kelly Sotherton won bronze in Athens four years later. Then it was London, EnnisHill and a night British athletics will never forget.
Will KJT follow in this tradition of multi-talented female Brits on the Olympic stage?
“Can I win gold in Rio?” said JohnsonThompson. “I have always felt that. I have just got to put it all together.”