THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY...
HEARTBREAKING END TO KAT’S GAMES BUT OUR GOLDEN GIRLS IN SAILING PUSH GB UP TO FOURTH IN MEDAL TABLE
IT has ended in tears before, of course. They fell after all those knocks and they fell again after all those medals of redemption. But nothing like these. Nothing like the tears that fell after the fall.
she rolled on to her front, her hands over her face, and then she heaved deep and often into the hot surface of lane four. Katarina Johnson-Thompson, that poor woman. That poor, broken queen of the heptathlon. all the talents an athlete can have and none of the luck.
so she lay there a while, before reaching back and grabbing the spot where the stabbing had come from as she cruised the bend of a 200m race.
It was her right calf, not to be confused with the shredded left achilles that was meant to rip up her chances, or any of the other body parts that have failed over the years. Nor the scars you can’t see — the deeper ones. The mind ones.
But about that. Remember when folk used to say she lacked bottle? When they pointed to the three botched long jumps that blew a gold at the Worlds in 2015 and the dive from contention at the Rio Olympics and attached their labels. Choker was one of them.
You wonder what they may have thought in 2018 when she won three big titles and 2019 when she became the best in the world. Or what they may have made of her forcing herself to be at these Games, having gone through the trauma of knowing a ruptured achilles had wrecked her best chance of winning Olympic gold.
Maybe it registered with a few of them that somehow, and against all sensible logic, she had got herself into podium contention here at the precise moment when the calf pinged. Maybe it didn’t.
In any case, that was the moment, 10 seconds after leaving her blocks, when Johnson Thompson had moved into the lead of her heat. a lead that
followed her recording the second quickest 100m hurdles time of her life at 13.27sec, a respectable clearance of 1.86m in the high jump and her second best ever shot put of 13.31m.
With the run going as it was, she was possibly on track to end the day in silver medal position. astonishing. One hell of a long way was left to go, but one hell of a tale was brewing. and then the stab, which led to a hop, a stutter, a fall and the death of a dream. What came next can be dressed up as Olympic spirit but that always feels a little over-seasoned. Whatever it was, after a minute or longer on the ground, she pushed away the wheelchair which had been brought over, grimaced to her feet and staggered the remaining 110 or so metres.
she had said in a difficult media gathering a fortnight ago that victory was just being here and at the time it rang as a defence mechanism. as she limped and bit her lip through those steps yesterday, maybe she just wanted one small win from a terrible loss.
But it didn’t feel like Derek Redmond and 1992. No crowd and not so uplifting. It was sadder, maybe even crueller for the sudden proximity of the prize and its sudden swing away again on the breeze, when we know how much she needs it. That is because for all the gold she has collected in the past three years of resurgence, she has often said she would feel bereft without a medal from the Olympics. at 28, with an awfully unkind record of injuries, you have to worry if the clock will allow it now.
Which brings us back to rotten colours of luck. Not only for the injury to her achilles that limited her to three tiny warm-up events — an injury that likely led to overcompensation and stress on the right calf — but also because of the pandemic postponement of the Games last year.
We have already seen the havoc that rained on Dina asher-smith, Britain’s only other track and field world champion, who would have had a decent shot at medals on two strong legs.
In Johnson-Thompson’s case, the medal would have surely been a minimum of silver and may well have been gold. Nafi Thiam, the brilliant Belgian, would have been in for one immense fight either way.
In the absence of Johnson Thompson, who was too distraught to speak, some informed pundits tried to capture a sense of where her head might land.
Jessica Ennis-hill, whose shadow often drowned Johnson-Thompson in the early years, said: ‘she’s been such a victim to the past 18 months. she was ready to go but it’s ended up in injury. It’s utterly, utterly devastating.’
Denise Lewis, another of that golden lineage, was more visceral. ‘she has worked so hard to get to this stage,’ she said. ‘her heart has been trashed on the track. It will be hard for her to come back from this emotionally — but she will.’
Possibly. Only the heartless would wish for anything else of an athlete who is unique in her openness around her vulnerabilities.
an athlete who once told Sportsmail and a couple of others that she had been reading up on imposter syndrome out of a belief that she did not belong with the best after her years of difficulties. she won the world title a few months later.
Imposter? Not one bit. Unlucky? Few have worn that hat so often, sadly.