Johnson-thompson flying high
Briton secures gold medal in long jump Lake takes seventh national high jump title
Sheepishly, wary of tempting fate, it was with almost a whisper that Katarina Johnson-thompson admitted this is the best she has ever felt going into a new season.
As has become customary over the years, a British Championship gold medal hung around her neck after she beat the long-jump specialists at their own event yesterday with a best of 6.46 metres. That followed the 60m hurdles silver she earned on Saturday when running her fastest time in four years.
Off the back of the best year of her life, during which she won world indoor and Commonwealth titles, as well as European silver, the confidence is there that she is ready to win a first global multi-events medal at the World Championships this year.
“It is,” she replied, when asked if this was the best she had felt ahead of a season. “And I don’t want to say all this stuff because it builds it up, and I have done that in the past. But I am very happy with how I am and I am coming in confident, so hopefully I can get it right on the day.”
The first chance to do so is at next month’s Glasgow European Indoor Championships, where she is looking to reclaim the pentathlon title she won in 2015 when becoming only the second woman in history to break 5,000 points.
That astonishing performance sparked talk of adding her name to the elite group of women who have scored 7,000 for a heptathlon, and her rise to the top of multi-eventing at that point seemed an inevitability.
But by the time she had put injuries and mental fragility behind her to notch a personal best at last summer’s European Championships, Belgium’s Nafi Thiam had inked her name as the undisputed multievents queen.
A muscle tear means Thiam will be absent from Glasgow to leave Johnson-thompson as clear favourite to add to her growing medal haul before the real test, when Thiam returns for the World Championships.
“It’s a real shame [Thiam] isn’t in Glasgow as I like to compete against her,” Johnson-thompson said.
“If I can concentrate on me and get my events where they need to be, I don’t see why I can’t be favourite.”
Fresh from equalling the British indoor record when clearing 1.97m a fortnight ago, Morgan Lake had no trouble adding her seventh successive national high jump title with a winning height of 1.94m, although she missed three attempts at the outright British record of 1.99m.
“[The record] would have been nice, but it’s good to consolidate what I’ve been doing in training and 1.94m is still a good jump,” she said.
“But I definitely want more. I’ll get it next time, I’ve got it in me.”
Shelayna Oskan-clarke showed she is in shape to add to the European indoor 800m silver she won two years ago with a dominant victory in 2min 5.04sec.
Elsewhere, Sophie Mckinna produced the biggest throw by a British woman in almost two decades to win the shot with 17.97m, Neil Gourlay claimed 1,500m gold in 3min 44.76sec and Chris O’hare won the 3,000m in 7min 52.86sec.