“Against all the odds, I’m still here,” says Katarina Johnson-Thompson, smiling wryly as she strokes a three-inch scar that snakes down her left achilles tendon. Another mark, on her right leg, is a cruel legacy from a torn calf muscle that ripped her Olympic dream away from her in Tokyo. There have been plenty of other scars – to groin and knee, as well as head and heart – down the years. Yet despite so many painful setbacks, Britain’s most compelling athlete is back, and planning the greatest renaissance of her career.
“I have unfulfilled goals, that’s why I’m still competing,” says Johnson-Thompson, looking happy and relaxed before her first heptathlon of the season at the prestigious Götzis Hypomeeting in Austria. “That’s why I continued after an achilles rupture in 2020, which for many is a career finisher. I still want to do it. I still love the sport. I still love heptathlon. And I want to win as many medals as I can over the next couple of years.”
There have been six major senior medals in her career, including a world outdoor title in 2019, and two world indoor gold medals in 2014 and 2018. But in the shadow of the Bregenzerwald mountains, Johnson-Thompson makes it clear that she has even loftier ambitions. Asked whether they include becoming only the fifth person to break into the 7,000 points club and winning an Olympic gold medal in Paris, she is emphatic. “Yeah completely.”
“I’m happy with what I’ve achieved so far,” she says. “But I want more before I retire. I don’t want to be sitting back and retiring, and then thinking in two years: ‘Well, I could have competed for another two years.’ So I’m in the mindset where I just want to try to squeeze everything I can out of the next two years.”
Johnson-Thompson and her highly regarded new coach, Petros Kyprianou, stress that any rebirth will not happen overnight. But Kyprianou is in no doubt just how much talent his athlete has.
“I told her the first time we met: ‘You’re probably the only one right now in the world that has Jackie Joyner-Kersee potential’,” he says. “‘And if there’s somebody that could challenge the world record, given you’re healthy, everything’s good, everything’s fine, it’s you’.
“Unfortunately, she is somebody that went through a lot. But I’ve never coached anybody over 7,000 points and I want her to be my first.”
However for this weekend Kyprianou has set Johnson-Thompson a modest target of 6,400 points – more than 500 less than her personal best – in order to get her body back to the stresses of high-level competition.
“When you’re coaching an ultra competitor like Kat, a world champion, the pressure is tremendous,” he says. “But my job is to basically give her realistic expectations this time of the year. She hasn’t completed a heptathlon since October 2019. She’s come off of an achilles rupture – arguably the worst injury in track and field – but she’s healthy and happy, so we have to manage our expectations and have fun. That’s what I really, really want to see her do is just have fun.”
Kyprianou is keen to use an analogy to further make his point. “She’s a Ferrari that went into a complete revamp of the super powerful V12 engine,” he says. “There’s a certain time to teach the engine when to function on high revs. She’s got a brand new achilles on her jumping leg and that, whether psychological, physical and everything in between, needs some sort of adjustment.
“But she’s so hungry to see that light at the end of the tunnel. And I think it will start showing this weekend. And if we end this year with something positive at the world championship, that would be huge building on to the next two years.”
Johnson-Thompson will face a strong field in Götzis, including the Tokyo 2020 silver and bronze medallists, Anouk Vetter and Emma Oosterwegel, as well as the world indoor bronze medallist, Kendell Williams, who is her training partner in Florida. Only the brilliant Belgian Nafi Thiam, the double Olympic champion, is missing having only recently returned to competition after a back injury. However Johnson-Thompson insists her only goal is to get round, not lay down a marker.
Johnson-Thompson also laughed when she was told that only four women in the field in Götzis are older than her. But at 29, she insists she still has time on her side – and points to Jessica Ennis-Hill and the Canadian Damien Warner as athletes who have won Olympic medals in their 30s.
For now though, it is about baby steps rather than bounding leaps – with Johnson-Thompson expecting to be faster on the runway in the long jump and to debut minor technical changes in the hurdles and shot put.
“I’m unranked at the minute,” she says. “This is the whole point of this weekend. I’m going to finish no matter what. I just want to get a score out and then hopefully I’ll be better prepared for the world championships in Eugene and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.”
As she speaks, there is a happiness and lightness to her tone. “This is the longest stretch of time where I’ve not had any sort of complaints – no injuries, or feeling worried about anything,” she says. “So that’s a big plus. I didn’t realise how long it would take me to get over the achilles injury. And then getting another injury – to be back in a boot, back on crutches – was hard to get started again.
“But I have a good block of training behind me now. This is the beginning of me getting back to the athlete I want to be.”
