KJT soars to new heights but still misses place on podium

Imagine performing better than you ever have before – good enough, in fact, to win a medal at every Olympic Games in history – and having nothing to show for it.

That is the galling situation facing Katarina Johnsonthompson as she flies back to her base in Montpellier, France, this morning.

Her weekend at the Götzis Hypo-meeting in Austria had not all been smooth sailing by any stretch of the imagination as her old throwing weakness cost her in the search for a medal yet again. But it did not prevent her from scoring a personal best 6,691 points and, crucially, finishing a heptathlon with a smile on her face – something that has been lacking over a troublesome couple of years.

Unfortunately for Johnson-thompson, that score meant she also departed Austria with an unwanted record: the highest heptathlon total in history to miss out on a place on the podium.

Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam’s phenomenal winning score of 7,013 was the best anywhere in the world for a decade, while Carolin Schafer (6,836) in second and Laura Ikaunieceadmidina (6,815) in third both recorded scores good enough for gold in Rio last year.

“I saw the stat that says it’s the best fourth-place score in heptathlon history so maybe I’ll change my biography to that,” joked Johnson-thompson. “All those three girls were on fire – you can’t control what other people do.

“I’m over the moon with everything I’ve done this weekend because I know it’s a building block towards better things in the future.”

Johnson-thompson had arrived at the track yesterday morning top of the pile. In receipt of a three-point lead over Thiam and a further three points over Schafer, her margin for error was always going to be infinitesimal and she knew that victory would likely be decided in the opening hour.

In the day’s first event, the long jump, Johnson-thompson’s best of 6.53metres was no disgrace, but Thiam leapt 6.56m, Schafer smashed her personal best to jump 6.57m and Ikauniece-admidina bettered them all with 6.64m.

A best of 39.98m in the javelin was a marginal improvement on what has been a terrible event for Johnsonthompson over the past couple of years. But while the Briton was grappling with the 40m mark, Ikaunieceadmidina was throwing 56.17m and Thiam a whopping 59.32m.

That near-20m deficit left an insurmountable gap to the top three by the time of the 800m, which she finished in 2 min 11.12 sec.