KJT’s form points to a golden future

KATARINA JOHNSONTHOMPSON came to Austria to find love and she just happened to find some form as well as she stormed to the top of an incredibly tight leaderboard.

This meet, in her precompetition estimation, was a chance to rekindle her affection for the heptathlon after the past two seasons of underachievement.

But what has transpired is rather more encouraging, given she passed 4,000 points after four events for the first time in her career, setting up a fascinating finale today against Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam and Carolin Schafer, who sit three and six points back respectively going into the long jump, javelin and 800m.

It would appear, at this early stage, to be a vindication of the bold call she took to relocate from Liverpool to Montpellier after she finished sixth at the Rio Olympics. In doing so she dropped the childhood coach who took her to a world juniors title and has teamed up with a trio of French trainers who have, in her words, ‘completely rebuilt’ her technique in four of seven disciplines.

The outcome yesterday was highly impressive and a good omen for August’s World Championships in London, where the 24-year-old will pursue her first major outdoor medal.

She said: ‘I honestly didn’t expect it. It’s crazy.

‘I’m surprised at the shape that I’m in because I didn’t feel like I was in top form coming into this so I’m happy that I can be competitive.’

She ran a 13.29sec personal best in the 100m hurdles, placing her fourth overall, before she reached 1.95m in the high jump, just 3cm short of the personal best she set in Rio. That left her 33 points shy of Thiam going into the shot put, which is her glaring weakness, but a throw of 12.72m, while dropping her to third behind Thiam and Schafer, was her best effort in a heptathlon. ‘Normally I drop about 10 places after the shot,’ she said.

Johnson-Thompson’s dayending run of 22.81sec in the 200m was only two hundredths shy of her personal best. It carried her to 4,059 points on the top of the table on 4059 points, which for the first time in heptathlon history had three athletes on more than 4,050 after day one.

A distinct area of improvement for JohnsonThompson was her resilience in tough moments, most notably in the high jump, where she twice survived by clearing heights at the third attempt, and then in the shot, which she opened with a poor throw of 11.71m.

She said: ‘I had a shaky first throw and normally I would go into meltdown mode so I was able to go so much further with my final throw.

‘Now I want to stay competitive. I just want to return to how I was as a kid, just enjoying it.’