I CHANGED MY LIFE FOR GOLD
KJT tells of journey from heartache to Doha glory
THERE were tears before bedtime for Katarina JohnsonThompson and a few more after breakfast yesterday. Evidently it may take a while for her to process the delightful way in which she has turned her career.
That is understandable in light of how low it went, and even more so when you hear how she wept in devastation with her mother in hotel rooms after botching the long jump at the World Championships in Beijing in 2015 and then again after fluffing her high jump at London 2017.
She has had a hard old run to this point, with a career set in the shadow of Jessica Ennis-Hill from the start and all manner of struggles with her body and mind since. If there was a low point, she explained yesterday, it was probably when she contemplated retirement on the track at Rio 2016, after another capitulation brought on by injury.
But what a sweet revival in Doha, where the 26- year- old contrived to upstage Dina AsherSmith with a remarkable performance to break Ennis-Hill’s national heptathlon record and took the gold from Nafi Thiam, the Olympic champion. In the recent history of British athletics there haven’t been many performances quite so surprising or impressive.
‘I didn’t want to cry when I got back to the hotel but I did — it was definitely good tears this time,’ she said after reporting only one hour of sleep in the aftermath of winning. ‘I’ve cried enough now to last me a career. I cried with my mum in the hotel in Beijing and in London. From now it’s just going to be smiles, hopefully.
‘It still doesn’t feel real. I’m just trying to wake myself up a bit. I think it’s relief that I feel. Relief that going into my fourth World Champs that something bad hasn’t happened again.’
With JohnsonThompson, those bad memories are often close to the surface and it might just be the way she is and always will be. Indeed, it was notable how even in May, having started her resurgence with golds at the World Indoors, Commonwealth Games and European Indoors, she spoke of still feeling like an ‘impostor’ at the elite level.
Great confidence will likely never be one of her assets, owing to the scars of her results and injuries in the three-year period from 2014.
It was in detailing the nadir of Rio 2016, where she sat third through four stages but finished a disappointing sixth, that she broke down in tears yesterday morning. ‘I was fed up of this feeling,’ she said. ‘I just knew that my body couldn’t make it through one, or my performances aren’t up to scratch to compete. I didn’t want to give up on something I truly believed, but…’
At that point JohnsonThompson became emotional. ‘I changed my life after that competition,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to give up on something I truly believed.’
The upshot has been a succession of gold medals in the past two years. The catalyst was her move to France in 2017, uprooting from a cosseted life under her mother’s wing in Liverpool, and a redrawing of all her techniques under a new coach. While she has always had individual talents, she lacked the savvy to put them together in a heptathlon. With that wisdom learnt from Bertrand Valcin, and from training next to decathlon world record holder Kevin Mayer, she has now collected medals at every level except the Olympics. Crucially, ahead of Tokyo 2020, she can also lay claim to a win over Thiam, who had not been beaten for three years. Her 304-point hammering of the great Belgian was the largest in a World Championships since 1987.
‘I’m in a great position now,’ she said. ‘It’s the best position I’ve been in — gold medal, injury free, national record but I know what it’s like to finish second and what it’s like when you want to win and prove yourself and that will be a dangerous Nafi I will be competing against next year.
‘I’m going to have to step up. I’m going to keep the same energy, go back into training and want the same things for myself.
‘I have always wanted to win an Olympic gold so I don’t think I will be short of inspiration over the next nine months.’ LAuRA MuIR will try to complete a golden hat-trick for British women — after Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson — when she runs in the 1500metres final today.
The women’s 4x100m relay team of Asher Philip, Imani- Lara Lansiquot, Ashleigh Nelson and Daryll Neita qualified second fastest for today’s final in 42.25sec.
The men’s team of Adam Gemili, Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty, and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake — defending their 2017 gold — went through in a world-leading 37.56. TV: LIVE on BBC1 from 2.45pm.