A silver lining but no golden hat-trick for KJT
SOMETIMES the opposition is just too good. And for that reason alone, Katarina Johnson-Thompson will reflect this morning on the silver linings of her trip to Berlin instead of celebrating a golden hat-trick.
Could she have done much more to stop Nafi Thiam? Possibly, if you were to pick at the nits, maybe around her good-but-unspectacular high jump on Thursday. Would an extra notch up have made much of a difference? Probably not, given how the brilliant Belgian responded any time Johnson-Thompson applied pressure across two fascinating days.
With each surge of British hope, back came the world and Olympic champion with deflating exhibitions of strength, most notably in the long jump and javelin yesterday.
For a time in each of those disciplines Johnson-Thompson looked as though she was going to be in a juicy position ahead of the concluding 800 metres, but twice she woke the bear, with Thiam thrillingly turning an 87-point overnight deficit into a 192-point advantage going into the finale.
That left Johnson-Thompson requiring a 13.5sec win over Thiam to take gold, but for all the 25-year-old’s superior gifts in that final discipline, it was always a remote possibility.
The best she could manage was just under 10sec with a 2min 9.84sec run and that was that — another title to Thiam, the best female athlete in the world, and a silver for Johnson-Thompson to sit alongside world indoor and Commonwealth Games golds in a coming-of-age season.
Those earlier golds were scored against far lesser opposition — this silver came in the strongest field of any event at these European Championships, against the women who will be the main contenders at the world championships next year and Tokyo 2020.
So, whereas most of Johnson-Thompson’s heptathlons have been followed with painful inquisitions into the shortcomings of her mind and throws, this one is a wholly more exciting signifier of where she stands.
For a start, her personal best tally of 6,759 points — just 57 down on Thiem — was higher than the three scores with which Jessica Ennis-Hill won world titles. The real boost this time came from the lack of implosions in the throws and the high levels she managed in the other five events.
She was 0.05sec off a personal best in the hurdles, shared the win in the high jump with Thiam and delivered her furthest ever shot put in a heptathlon with 13.09m. She lost ground, but nowhere near as much as usual.
Her 200m of 19.88sec was the best ever recorded at a European Championships heptathlon.
In the long jump came the first of Thiam’s fightbacks. Johnson-Thompson had ramped up the pressure with a final leap of 6.68m — her longest in a heptathlon and 23cm up on Thiam.
But back came Thiam with a 6.60m and what would have been a 162-point lead after five events became an altogether more slender 113.
It was a similar tale in the javelin, where Johnson-Thompson stemmed the usual bleeding that accompanies her throws with a personal best 42.16m, which looked very useful in light of Thiam punching some way below her weight at 53.55m for two throws.
However, Thiam pulled out a championship record 57.91m with her last launch and opened enough of a gap to take the sting away from the 800m.
Still, Johnson-Thompson made a fight of it before leaving with silver and a priceless thought that Thiam is not invincible.
Later, Matt Hudson-Smith took gold in the men’s 400m after making a lightning start and then holding on in final hundred metres to win in 44.78sec.
The men’s and women’s 4x400m relay teams qualified for tonight’s finals, while Dina Asher-Smith, Beth Dobbin and Bianca Williams reached the 200m final. There was also a straightforward win in the 1500m heats for Laura Muir in 4:09.12 ahead of tomorrow’s final, for which she is the huge favourite.