Pain of losing my dad drives me on
SAYS KATARINA JOHNSON-THOMPSON
THERE’S been sadness behind the joy for Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the past ten months. The collection of two gold medals tells a story of potential finally being fulfilled, but there has also been a painful loss.
Her father, Ricky Thompson, passed away on his home island of the Bahamas last November, aged just 59, and despite living apart from his daughter in Liverpool since she was one, they had a good relationship.
‘It’s been difficult, especially winter,’ Johnson-Thompson told Sportsmail.
Aside from a short Instagram post the day after his funeral in which Johnson-Thompson detailed his ‘infectious laugh and a heart of pure love’, it’s not a subject she’s discussed publicly since. Yet it is also a key driving force behind her attempt to pull off one of the toughest challenges in athletics next week: beating Nafissatou Thiam in a heptathlon.
If the 25-year-old succeeds against long odds by winning at the European Championships in Berlin, it would complete an extraordinary hat-trick in 2018 for a talented athlete who had often underperformed on the bigger occasions before breaking through this season with golds at the world indoors and Commonwealth Games.
That is a monumentally big ‘if’. Those wins, grand as they are, were secured against weaker fields, while Thiam is the reigning world and Olympic champion and the third-best heptathlete of all time, with a top score of 7,013 points — 322 ahead of JohnsonThompson and in excess of anything Jessica Ennis-Hill managed.
It’s a big gap that feels bigger still when you consider JohnsonThompson’s revelation that her preparations for Germany have been affected by a calf injury, but bridging that gulf is where her father comes in again.
‘What happened with my dad is why I have been so switched on in competitions,’ she said. ‘He didn’t see me win and that has actually made me want to win in front of my mum (Tracey) even more, if that makes sense.
‘She comes to see me in every single competition and I always feel for her when I don’t do well, or I let myself down.
‘I really want to involve her and I really want her to experience me winning and doing it. That is why I was so happy in Birmingham for the world indoors and the Commonwealth Games.
‘Your family are proud of you anyway, obviously, but this is just something inside me that pushes me a bit extra.’
Missing chances has been something of a theme in JohnsonThompson’s career before this year. Great expectations have hovered over her since she became world junior champion in 2009 but it has been slow going — she blew a medal with three long-jump fouls when second at the 2015 worlds, faded to sixth at the Rio Olympics and wrecked her 2017 worlds with a poor high jump.
The throws have typically been her weakness, but the head had been equally suspect in big moments, and that is why there is such excitement within the sport over what she might now achieve with the confidence of two gold medals behind her.
Johnson-Thompson buys into that theory, but is also increasingly mindful that time is hurrying along in her career.
‘You do feel the years go by,’ she said. ‘Major opportunities come once a year and you put it all on the line and if it doesn’t go well, you wait an entire year for the next chance at a major medal.
‘I feel I am coming towards my peak opportunities in the next three or four years. I used to think Tokyo 2020 would be my main one but maybe it will be 2024.
‘The next few years are important but I do believe I haven’t fulfilled my potential yet.’
The strength of Thiam, who is two years younger at 23, has complicated the landscape.
‘She has achieved everything I want to achieve,’ said JohnsonThompson. ‘People are not bigging her up too much at all.
‘I used to think if I was top of my game in every event, then no one could beat me but Thiam has better PBs added up than me.
‘I have had to reassess my life a little bit after the 7,000 points she got last year but I do believe I am still able to get PBs.
‘I’m looking forward to going against her. She’s a great athlete and a really nice person but I know from experience that anything can happen in a heptathlon.’
From her training base in southern France, the confidence for Berlin has only been spoken of in muted terms. A calf injury she picked up in winning the Commonwealth Games put her behind ‘where I wanted to be at the start of the year’, but then again she can be satisfied with two gold medals by April and a shot at a hat-trick in August.
‘I’m always going for more,’ she said. ‘I have not arrived yet, so I need to push on.’