Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the Briton with the talent to become the best all-round female track and field athlete, just missed out on the pentathlon world record as she landed the first gold of the European Indoor Championships on Friday.
Johnson-Thompson, tipped to follow her compatriot Jessica Ennis-Hill as an Olympic heptathlon champion, became only the second woman to break the 5,000 point barrier for the one-day, five-discipline event.
The 22-year-old Liverpudlian, known as KJT, compiled a total of exactly 5,000 points, but, despite running a personal best in the final event — the 800m — she finished 13 points shy of the world record held by Ukrainian Nataliya Dobrynska.
Photo: Reuters
As she took gold by a huge margin of 304 points from Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam, Johnson-Thompson was fed up that her legs had betrayed her in her final solo push over the four laps following a long and tiring day.
She had needed to run 2 minutes, 11.86 seconds to break Dobrynska’s mark, but had to settle for 2 minutes, 12.78 seconds.
“I’ve been tearing my brains out these last couple of weeks thinking I could get the world record, so to come so close I’m disappointed,” she told reporters. “I’m feeling very emotional. Obviously, I’m happy to come away with my first senior championship gold, I’ve never done that before, so I’ve got to take the positives.”
There were plenty of them in a dominant performance. She recorded a personal best of 8.18 seconds in the 60m hurdles, a 1.95m high jump and a 6.89m leap, a performance that would have won six of the previous seven individual long-jump titles at these championships. Her only weak result was her 12.35m shot put effort.
Ennis-Hill, who is coming back to the sport after a maternity break and whose rivalry with the young pretender looks set to provide a welcome boost for British athletics, was quick to congratulate Johnson-Thompson.
“Well done Kat!!” she wrote on Twitter. “Amazing performance! Sad to see my record go but couldn’t have gone to a more deserving athlete!”
German David Storl won the men’s shot put final with a throw of 21.23m, beating the previous best European Indoor qualifying throw of 20.93m.
France claimed a clean sweep in the men’s 60m hurdles final, with Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, Dimitri Bascou and Wilhem Belocian winning the gold, silver and bronze medals respectively.
In the women’s event, Belarus’ Alina Telay won gold ahead of British pair Lucy Hatton (silver) and Serita Solomon (bronze), both of whom ran personal bests.
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