KJT still plagued by injury as she fails to hit the heights

KATARINA JOHNSON-THOMPSON has overcome all manner of hurdles just to make it to the Tokyo Olympics. On the evidence of the first part of the heptathlon, this might prove a competition too far.

The world champion had admitted on the eve of competition she did not know how her body would hold up to the rigours of seven events and, with five of them still to go, that has still not been fully answered.

But lengthy treatment on her Achilles between rounds of the high jump highlighted the magnitude of the physical challenges she is facing.

Days before the games, JohnsonThompson, who was third after two events, 38 points off leader Nafi Thiam, had declared herself fit but not necessarily in personal best form.

Inspired to aim for the top having watched the BBC series Gold Rush in the event build-up, she insisted the Olympics would highlight the championship performer in her.

And so it proved in her opening event, the 100m hurdles, as she won her heat in 13.27 seconds, the quickest time she had run outside of Doha in 2019, when she had looked unbeatable virtually all competition long.

However, eight months after Achilles surgery, the jumping events were always going to be the big question mark. She lacked her usual fluency in the high jump, having a failure at 1.80m and two at 1.83m, heights she would usually sail over as an athlete with a PB of 1.98. She eventually bowed out at 1.86m, some way short of the 1.95m achieved in Doha as world champion.

It was a season’s best but 10cm shy of her own PB, giving Johnson-Thompson some relative positivity.

Johnson-Thompson’s boyfriend, Andrew Pozzi, meanwhile, snuck through into the final of the men’s 110metres hurdles. He finished fourth in his semi-final and outside the top-two qualifiers but got in as the second of two fastest losers for tomorrow’s final.

Of his agonising wait to find out if he had reached the final, Pozzi said: “That was horrible, excruciating. It’s the first time I’ve had to go through that wait, hopefully it will be the last. I’m so happy to make the final.”

The only other Briton in action in the morning session, David King, failed to make it to the final.

In the standout final of the session, the women’s 400metres hurdles lived up to the quality laid down by Karsten Warholm in the men’s, as the USA’s Sydney McLaughlin broke the world record.

Her time of 51.46s would have been enough to book her place in the semifinals of the 400m, as silver medallist Dalilah Muhammad and Femke Bol, with the bronze, both dipped under the previous world best.