Britain won a shock silver medal in the mixed 4x400metre relay on night one of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest after the Netherlands’ Femke Bol fell approaching the finishing line.
The United States, who broke the world record, had been expected to lead home the Dutch but Bol’s legs failed her in the home straight to pave the way for the unheralded quartet of Lewis Davey, Laviai Nielsen, Rio Mitcham and Yemi Mary John to finish second.
It gave the British team its first medal of the championship in a tough 15 minutes for the Dutch in which Sifan Hassan earlier tripped and fell on the home straight when in sight of gold in the 10,000m.
Mitcham revealed afterwards how Nielsen had given the team a pre-race pep talk about how a medal could change their life.
And Nielsen said: “I know what it’s like to win a medal and how it can change your life. I told these guys that we are capable and we are strong enough so let’s go get it and we did.”
Katarina Johnson-Thompson, meanwhile, finds herself in the silver medal spot at the halfway point of the heptathlon, her career having come full circle from thinking it was over.
A ruptured Achilles eight months out from the Olympics combined with a calf injury after having made it back fit for Tokyo led her to believe her time as an elite athlete was up.
But in Budapest as the first British athlete in action at these championships, she showed there is still both plenty of ability and fight left.
In the lead-up to the Worlds, she likened the heptathlon to spinning plates. At the halfway point, she may not have quite been at her career best but she avoided those metaphoric plates crashing down around her as has been the past at some major championships.
Her time of 13.50seconds for the 100metre hurdles was fourth tenths slower than the personal best set on her way to being crowned world champion in Doha four years ago but also only her third quickest time for the event this season.
The jumping events have been her Achilles heel since that rupture on her take-off leg. She was never going to get close to her 1.98m PB set at the Rio Olympics, a clearance that would have been enough to win gold in the individual event.
But there was a danger of a dire high jump as she needed three attempts to clear 1.80m. She cleared it and got as high as 1.86m, still good enough to top the field to leave her in fourth place going into the evening session.
American Anna Hall, to whom Johnson-Thompson had finished runner-up at her only other heptathlon this year in Gotzis, is seen as the overwhelming favourite to become world champion.
But 10 years after her Liverpudlian rival made her own championship debut, the now 30-year-old Briton said she had belief she could push Hall and the rest of the field.
“I feel like anybody who’s won a major championship has the ability to say, ‘I’ve done it before therefore it can be done again’.”
She now lies second overall 93 points behind Hall going into the second day of competition after solid displays in her final two events - a throw of 13.64m in the shot put and the quickest time of any athlete in the 200m - a 23.48.
Another Brit Laura Muir, who split from coach Andy Young at the start of the year, comfortably made her way out of her heat of the 1500m to finish second behind Sifan Hassan in a time of 4:03.50.
Afterwards, Muir said: “I felt really good and it’s just a matter of getting round with the least amount of bother. There’s always a bit scrapping and a bit of spiking and for me that felt comfortable and just did what I needed to do.”
But there was less good news for Jazmin Sawyers in the long jump as she failed to make it out of qualifying and into the final.
