GOLDEN GIRLS ON TOP OF THE WORLD
On two magical nights in Qatar two Brits won in style...and laid down markers for the Olympics
GO back to October, to a vast structure built in a desert and named after a sheik. It was mostly a quiet place, the Khalifa International Stadium; a monument to the mysteries of sports politics which was half- empty on some of its fuller nights.
Before the gun, folk said Doha would be a weird old place to bring the world’s best athletes. By the tape, very few beyond the offices of the IAAF knew of any reason to change their view.
But in between, in those most curious of surroundings and amid the serious messes of those who run the British team, two women in blue, white and red vests did something truly special.
What played out on October 2 and October 3 were performances that stand among the finest of any from this country in 2019 and it is for good reason that Dina Asher- Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson were recognised on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist.
For Asher-Smith, winning the 200m gold medal always seemed a matter of when rather than if. Who knows what heights she can reach in the next eight months?
Johnson-Thompson’s triumph was a beautiful surprise and one that somehow succeeded in eclipsing what had occurred the night before. Indeed, in the history of British athletics, or that of most other sports, it is hard to think of many tales more uplifting than the one which culminated in this self- described ‘imposter’ winning the heptathlon.
After she had scaled the mountain, and in doing so crushed the great Nafi Thiam, JohnsonThompson met a few British journalists the following morning.
She was doing just fine for five or so minutes, having outlined those dark, dark days of injury and chokes, but then in discussing the sadness she felt after falling away at the 2016 Olympics, she covered her eyes.
Realising she was fighting an impossible battle against her tears, she had to get up and walk away for a moment. From 15 yards away you could hear the sobs and her attempts to catch breath. That was the context to winning a gold medal — a woman scarred by her past and who, at some stage, had lost faith in her ability to deliver in the present and future.
She has occasionally contested the latter by saying how she knew she had the talents to put together a golden heptathlon on the right day. And on the basis of her performances in claiming World Indoor gold, Commonwealth Games gold and European Indoor gold across 2018 and early 2019, she had indeed proved a corner had been turned after relocating to France in late 2016.
But none of those golds had come against Thiam, who was unbeaten in three years. And nothing we had seen, for all the improvements, could undo the nagging memories of what she told us in May when, in a mountain town in Austria, she explained she had been reading about ‘impostor syndrome’. She didn’t belong among the very best, was the gist of it.
She jokes about that now and indeed it may have been interpreted too strongly. But she doesn’t hide from the point that she had been shredded by her experiences over the years, from the hyped heir to Jessica EnnisHill to an adult who couldn’t trust her body and mind at the biggest moments.
Her honesty in describing her struggles, the lack of disguise for her vulnerabilities, mark her apart from just about any other British sportsman or woman competing at elite level.
And that is also why anyone and everyone should have enjoyed what she did in Doha. ‘I still cannot quite believe it sometimes,’ she told Sportsmail last month.
‘I think I will always be someone who has nagging doubts in my mind, even now. I’m just so relieved and happy that when it mattered, I could pull it off.’
The detail in how she delivered another medal to around 30 others is quite something. She produced personal bests in two out of four events on day one, and two out of three on day two.
To peak at the right time in one discipline is the goal of all athletes at a championships; to peak in four amid the attrition of a heptathlon is just remarkable.
Her score of 6,981 points broke the British record of Ennis-Hill — still the standard bearer by virtue of what she did under monumental pressure at London 2012 — and her margin over Thiam, the Olympic champion, was a monstrous 304 points. It was the biggest gap to silver in a heptathlon at a World Championships since 1987.
‘The Olympics have always been the thing for me,’ JohnsonThompson added. ‘I have to find a way to do it again.’
The story is somewhat neater with Asher- Smith, it must be said. Britain’s leading sprinter since Linford Christie has created a tale of relentless success.
We saw it when she won the world junior title in the 100m in 2014 and we saw it at the
European Championships last year when she won golds in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay.
But as she told Sportsmail a few weeks ago: ‘Last year was a down year for the rest of the world, so you had to keep it in proportion.’
At the Worlds, she said before the competition, ‘everyone’ would be coming out to play.
As it transpired, they didn’t, with a combination of injuries, scheduling conflicts, withdrawals, disqualifications and poor form accounting for Shelly-Ann FraserPryce, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Dafne Schippers, Marie- Josee Ta Lou, Blessing Okagbare and Elaine Thompson before the final.
But it is hard to attach a caveat to a stopwatch and Asher-Smith’s winning time of 21.88sec would have been good enough for 200m gold at 13 of the 17 World Championships.
‘I still think I made mistakes in that race,’ she said.
Be that as it may, for the first time at a Worlds or an Olympics, Britain had a female short-range sprint champion.
With her silvers in the 100m and 4x100m, she was the first British athlete since Mary Rand in 1964 to win three in a global championships.
Tokyo will be harder for her and it will be harder for JohnsonThompson. But it would be daft to bet against them repeating what they did in Doha this year.
It is hard to think of many tales that are more uplifting