Katarina Johnson-Thompson: ‘I’ve got unfinished business with the Olympics’

‘In 2022 I mentally wasn’t there,” says Katarina Johnson-Thompson, with an honesty every bit as breathtaking as her ability to defy the laws of sporting gravity. “I was sort of checked out. I was living in this victim state. ‘Why me? Why does this happen? Oh, I’m so unlucky.’ That was my frame of mind. And I wasn’t truly … well, I was trying, but I wasn’t truly committed to the training process.”

She knows that many people thought she was finished. She too feared that the three-inch scar down her left achilles tendon might prove to be kryptonite for her superpowers. Yet somehow, after three long years suffused with injuries and pain, and having tiptoed across the wrong side of 30, Johnson-Thompson summoned a comeback for the ages by becoming world heptathlon champion for a second time in August.

She now finds herself on the shortlist again for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Although in truth, if sporting personality was the sole criterion, she would be on it every December. Because in a world where sports stars are more on-message than a New Labour acolyte, with bland talking points and musty cliches, Johnson-Thompson tells it how it is. Even if it means exposing her doubts and vulnerabilities.

“I think it is me and my personality,” she says. “I don’t like to lie, which is why I didn’t give any interviews after I ruptured my achilles, because I didn’t want to pretend everything was OK. I think I am quite soul-baring. I probably overshare. There’s a lot of front-facing people who like to pretend to be strong all the time. I haven’t met anyone who is really like that.”

But she was strong at those world championships in Budapest. Particularly in the last of seven events, the 800 metres, which came down to a shootout so epic it could have been directed by Sergio Leone.

To win gold, Johnson-Thompson had to stay within three seconds of the brilliant young American Anna Hall. The problem? Hall’s personal best was five seconds faster.

And so began a torturous two-lap examination of the Briton’s heart and lungs. Time and again, Hall kicked and silently asked her rival to quit. Yet Johnson-Thompson clung to her like a limpet.

Two minutes and five seconds later, she tumbled over the line just behind Hall, with a two-second PB and another world title. It looked brutal, I say. She shakes her head. “There wasn’t a moment where I thought, ‘Oh God, no, she’s gonna win,’ she says. “I just knew.”

Then comes another confession. “The most brutal part was actually the seven-hour wait between the end of the javelin and the starter saying ‘On your marks’ for the 800m,” she says.

“Normally I’m a person who can sleep anywhere. And in Budapest I had these sleep goggles, meditation music and I was in a dark room. But I just couldn’t relax. All I could think about was all the different things that might happen. But my coach, Aston Moore, and my team played it perfectly. And when the 800m started I was back in the moment, back in control.”

That was not the only moment of doubt during those world championships. There was a wobble after the 100m hurdles and the high jump on day one did not go completely to plan. “Even if everything’s all aligned and you have had a good preparation, sometimes you can talk yourself out of it on the day,” she says. “And I think there is an alternate universe where that probably happened. But I am living in this one where I was able to kick myself out of it.”

A strong performance in shot put and a fast 200m, left her 93 points behind Hall after the first day. And then Johnson-Thompson engaged beast mode.

“I just turned up a different person on day two,” she says. “I was just on a mission. And you can see it. Each long jump went 10cm further. Then I got an outright PB in the javelin and 800m. I was just trying to squeeze out everything from my performances.”

So what changed between 2022 and 2023? Johnson-Thompson credits the 67-year-old Moore, who took over her coaching duties last year, for getting her back to full physical fitness with the help of lung-busting 800m sessions in the depths of winter. Sometimes they were so tough Johnson-Thompson threw up. But it took a little longer for her mind to truly believe too.

At this point, she goes back to May, when the Guardian was the only UK newspaper to travel to Götzis to see her open her outdoor season. “In 2021, I could point to the injury as explaining my performance,” she says. “While in 2022, I wasn’t motivated. However, I came into Götzis knowing that I was trying and I didn’t have any injuries. And so I was telling myself, ‘If this is a bad performance, I’m just a bad athlete now.’

“There were no excuses basically. And it was so hard to put myself out there. In my head I was saying: ‘OK, maybe I’ll never be the same. Maybe the achilles rupture is a career-ending injury. And maybe I was just making excuses when I said I wasn’t truly trying last year.’ To truly put yourself out there was the scariest thing.”

But she did, and was able to reap the awards – including being handed the female athlete of the year by the British Athletics Writers’ Association. There might yet be another award at Spoty on Tuesday night, although the England goalkeeper Mary Earps is a prohibitive favourite.

Whatever happens Johnson-Thompson says she is determined to enjoy the evening. She has fond memories of watching the show with her grandfather and attending in 2010 and getting photos with everyone she recognised from TV – from top sports stars to James Corden. However, in 2019 she says she did not truly celebrate as she was so focused on the Tokyo Olympics – which were then cancelled three months later. This time she says she wants to have a “good time and live in the moment”.

Before then, she hopes to continue to inspire others with her KJT Academy, which is backed by the Liverpool Football Club Foundation and gives support to talented state school athletes from ethnically diverse communities.

“It’s something very close to home,” she says. “Especially given the cost of living crisis. I know that if I didn’t have help I wouldn’t have made it to London 2012. And that kickstarted my career.”

Inevitably her sights are already drifting towards Paris next year and one of the few things that has eluded her during her glittering career: an Olympic medal.

This will be her fourth attempt, after an exciting debut in London and injury-marred shots at glory in Rio and Tokyo. And she knows that the competition is likely to be even hotter than in Budapest, with the double Olympic champion Nafi Thiam and the young Polish star Adrianna Sulek both expected to return from injury.

“I’ve got unfinished business,” Johnson-Thompson says. “I know it’s going to be tough, and the heptathlon is so unpredictable, so my aim is just to get to the start line healthy.”

Achieve that, though, and doubts can become dreams. As we all learned during those two extraordinary days back in August.