KILLING IT!
Golden girl KJT and surprising school pal
BRITAIN has another golden girl after Katarina Johnson-Thompson took top spot in the heptathlon at the World Athletics Championships. NADINE LINGE has everything you need to know about the new champ.
KATARINA JohnsonThompson was born on January 9, 1993 in Woolton, Liverpool to dad Ricardo Thompson, from the Bahamas, and dancer mum Tracey Johnson. Her parents met when her mum’s dance troupe the Bluebell Girls played a hotel in Nassau where Ricardo was the bellboy.
Her mum came home to have her baby and then returned to the Bahamas. But the relationship was short-lived and they divorced when Katarina was one.
Katarina had ballet lessons as a kid, which she hated – she wanted to play football in her Liverpool top instead. She eventually realised athletics was her calling and by 11 was jumping 1.32m in the high jump. She competed in the 2012 London Olympics aged 19, coming 13th in the heptathlon.
The young KJT was a pupil at St Julie’s Catholic High School, where she was classmates with Jodie Comer, who would go on to find fame and awards as assassin Villanelle in hit show Killing Eve.
They became best friends and are still close, with a WhatsApp group called H**s In Different Area Codes because they are always travelling. Katarina said: “We’ve got the same sense of humour, silly same personality, and towards our later years at school we were friends in the sense that we both had dreams away from the normal.”
Jodie congratulated her mate on Instagram yesterday writing: “World champion right there! We couldn’t be prouder of you.”
Katarina has suffered many setbacks in her career with disappointments at the World
Championships in 2015 and 2017 and the Rio Olympics in 2016. After that she decided to take drastic action. She ditched her coach and moved to Montpellier in France, where she had to learn the language and start again.
Her life in France is focused around training, which she does six days a week. Mondays are shot put and sprint, Tuesdays, hurdles and javelin, Wednesdays, 800m, Thursdays, javelin and high jump, Fridays, sprint and high jump, Saturdays, long sprints.
Her coach nicknamed her Droopy due to her “sad demeanour” but changed it to Katastrophe after discovering how accident-prone she is.
In 2017 her dad died aged just 59 at his home in the Bahamas. Katarina used his death to spur herself on even more. She said: “He didn’t see me win and that has actually made me want to win in front of my mum even more. 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, or I don’t reach my potential.”
Katarina loves fashion and took to the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week in 2018. She also appeared on a celebrity charity version of The Great British Bake Off earlier this year.
KJT dated Radio 1Xtra DJ Nick Bright but they split around the time she overhauled her life. She is now in a relationship with Brit hurdler Andrew Pozzi.
Katarina is crazy about her two daschunds – Bronx and Chorizo – who she calls her “babies.” They even have their own Instagram account!