News Desk
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award nominee on her comeback world heptathlon title win and her dreams for Paris
In 2022 I mentally wasn’t there,” says Katarina Johnson-Thompson, with an honesty every bit as breathtaking as her ability to defy the laws of sporting gravity. “I was sort of checked out. I was living in this victim state. ‘Why me? Why does this happen? Oh, I’m so unlucky.’ That was my frame of mind. And I wasn’t truly … well, I was trying, but I wasn’t truly committed to the training process.”
She knows that many people thought she was finished. She too feared that the three-inch scar down her left achilles tendon might prove to be kryptonite for her superpowers. Yet somehow, after three long years suffused with injuries and pain, and having tiptoed across the wrong side of 30, Johnson-Thompson summoned a comeback for the ages by becoming world heptathlon champion for a second time in August.
She now finds herself on the shortlist again for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Although in truth, if sporting personality was the sole criterion, she would be on it every December. Because in a world where sports stars are more on-message than a New Labour acolyte, with bland talking points and musty cliches, Johnson-Thompson tells it how it is. Even if it means exposing her doubts and vulnerabilities.
“I think it is me and my personality,” she says. “I don’t like to lie, which is why I didn’t give any interviews after I ruptured my achilles, because I didn’t want to pretend everything was OK. I think I am quite soul-baring. I probably overshare. There’s a lot of front-facing people who like to pretend to be strong all the time. I haven’t met anyone who is really like that.”
But she was strong at those world championships in Budapest. Particularly in the last of seven events, the 800 metres, which came down to a shootout so epic it could have been directed by Sergio Leone.
To win gold, Johnson-Thompson had to stay within three seconds of the brilliant young American Anna Hall. The problem? Hall’s personal best was five seconds faster.
And so began a torturous two-lap examination of the Briton’s heart and lungs. Time and again, Hall kicked and silently asked her rival to quit. Yet Johnson-Thompson clung to her like a limpet.
Two minutes and five seconds later, she tumbled over the line just behind Hall, with a two-second PB and another world title. It looked brutal, I say. She shakes her head. “There wasn’t a moment where I thought, ‘Oh God, no, she’s gonna win,’ she says. “I just knew.”
Then comes another confession. “The most brutal part was actually the seven-hour wait between the end of the javelin and the starter saying ‘On your marks’ for the 800m,” she says.
“Normally I’m a person who can sleep anywhere. And in Budapest I had these sleep goggles, meditation music and I was in a dark room. But I just couldn’t relax. All I could think about was all the different things that might happen. But my coach, Aston Moore, and my team played it perfectly. And when the 800m started I was back in the moment, back in control.”
That was not the only moment of doubt during those world championships. There was a wobble after the 100m hurdles and the high jump on day one did not go completely to plan. “Even if everything’s all aligned and you have had a good preparation, sometimes you can talk yourself out of it on the day,” she says. “And I think there is an alternate universe where that probably happened. But I am living in this one where I was able to kick myself out of it.”
A strong performance in shot put and a fast 200m, left her 93 points behind Hall after the first day. And then Johnson-Thompson engaged beast mode.
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