Johnson-thompson’s Path To World Athletics Championships Gold

KATARINA JohnsonThompson will now feel complete.

She has been among the best heptathletes in the world for several years and touted as a star of the discipline since winning the World Youth Championships a decade ago.

She has had an abundance of emotional support, ranging from her close bond with her mother - highlighted by a touching letter during the 2016 Olympics - to affection from friends such as Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer and athlete boyfriend Andrew Pozzi.

She has had UK Sport funding for most of her career and supplemented that with several commercial deals. But there had been a major hole in her life, one that wasn’t filled until a balmy night inside Doha’s Khalifa Stadium.

That was when she comprehensively defeated defending champion and main rival Nafissatou Thiam to win heptathlon gold at the World Championships.

Johnson-thompson triumphed in style with a British-record 6,981 points, beating silver medallist Thiam by 304 points and setting four personal bests in the process.

“She has slayed the dragon and banished the demons,” Michael Johnson, a former world and Olympic 200m and 400m champion, told BBC Sport. “What you used to see between events was a worry that the demons are going to come back. She has now overcome that.”

Her accession to the throne was expected to be faster and smoother, but there was to be plenty of heartache before she reached the top.

Having won the World Youth title in 2009, it was expected to be only a matter of time before she followed 2000 Olympic heptathlon champion Denise Lewis and eventually take over from Dame Jessica Ennis-hill, who dominated the event from 2009 to 2015.

The perfect stepping stone to this seemed London 2012, for which she was selected alongside Ennis-hill and Louise Hazel.

Jodie Comer and Katarina Johnson-thompson

Actress Jodie Comer, who has just won an Emmy for her performance in Killing Eve, and Katarina JohnsonThompson were classmates at St Julie’s School in Liverpool

There were PBS in the 100m hurdles, high jump and 200m but she was last in the shot put and struggled in the javelin. At the age of 19, KJT - as she was starting to be affectionately known - had finished a very creditable 13th.

She said of the experience: “That stadium is always going to hold a special place in my heart and it definitely brings back a lot of emotions. In 2012 I was just going along with the wind really.”

Ennis-hill, who has watched JohnsonThompson since she was competing at youth level, told BBC Sport: “She’s changed massively since those days of London 2012. “She was relatively inexperienced, had fantastic raw talent, but hadn’t understood how to put the events together.”

The Liverpool-born athlete was starting to close the gap on Ennis-hill and the rest in subsequent events. At the 2013 World Championships she came fifth and then won the traditional multi-eventers’ Gotzis meeting in 2014 where a 19-year-old Thiam came fifth.

Just as she looked ready to make what seemed the natural move to a major global podium position, the incline started to get a little slippery. 2015: Johnson-thompson’s day ends in tears.