Katarina Johnson-Thompson

Katarina Mary Johnson-Thompson (born 9 January 1993) is an English athlete. A multi-eventer, she is primarily known as both a heptathlete and an indoor pentathlete. In heptathlon she is a double world champion and double Commonwealth Games champion. In indoor pentathlon, she is a world and double European champion.

Representing Great Britain, Johnson-Thompson won the heptathlon gold medal at the 2019 World Championships, breaking the British record with a score of 6,981 points which ranks her at No. 6 on the all-time lists. Her heptathlon results include finishing 14th at the 2012 London Olympics, fifth at the 2013 World Championships, sixth at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and fifth at the 2017 World Championships. She won the gold medal in the event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games before claiming silver at the 2018 European Championships. She retained her title at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. She also holds the British indoor pentathlon record of 5,000 points and won gold in that event at the 2018 World Indoor Championships, as well as the 2015 and 2019 European Indoor Championships.

Johnson-Thompson's career has often coincided with those of fellow British athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill and Belgium's Nafi Thiam, with whom she has competed since junior competition. She is the only athlete to have defeated Thiam in global competition since Thiam won Olympic gold in 2016.

Johnson-Thompson has also occasionally represented Great Britain in her two strongest individual disciplines: the high jump and long jump. She holds the British high jump outdoor record, and in the long jump, she was the 2012 World Junior champion and the 2014 World Indoor silver medalist.

Early life
Katarina Mary Johnson-Thompson was born in the Woolton suburb of Liverpool on 9 January 1993, the daughter of English mother Tracey Johnson and Bahamian father Ricardo Thompson (died November 2017). Her mother is a former dancer, while her father worked as a production assistant for the Bahamian television station ZNS-TV. She spent the first year of her life in Nassau with her father after her parents separated, then returned to England to live with her mother in the town of Halewood near Liverpool, where she attended St Mark's Catholic Primary School and became interested in athletics. She later moved with her mother back to Woolton, where she attended St Julie's Catholic High School and became close friends with future actress Jodie Comer, before going on to study sports science at Liverpool John Moores University.

Youth career
Johnson-Thompson represent Liverpool Harriers, which is based in Liverpool's Wavertree district, and was formerly coached by Mike Holmes. Her development was in part funded by the Wells Sports Foundation set up by Barrie Wells, which gave her access to the foundation's patron, Jessica Ennis (now Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill).

At the 2009 World Youth Championships in Athletics in Brixen, Italy, she won the gold medal in the heptathlon. She missed most of the 2010 athletics season suffering from patellar tendinopathy, also known as jumper's knee.

Johnson-Thompson broke Jessica Ennis' British junior record at the Multistars competition held in Desenzano del Garda, Italy in May 2012. Her score of 6007 points was enough to take third position at the event behind Sofía Ifadídou of Greece and French athlete Blandine Maisonnier. The score also meant she had surpassed the 'B' qualifying standard for the 2012 Olympics, however it fell short of the 6,150 points 'A' standard. In June, Johnson-Thompson achieved the 'A' qualifying standard for the Games by scoring a new personal best of 6,248 points at the TNT – Fortuna Meeting held in Kladno, Czech Republic. At the meeting she set six new personal bests across the seven events to beat her previous best score by 241 points.

At the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics held in Barcelona, Johnson-Thompson chose not to compete in the full heptathlon competition to save herself for the Olympics; instead she took part in the long jump—winning a gold medal with a jump of 6.81 metres—and the 100 metres hurdles.

London Olympics and first World Championships
Johnson-Thompson competed for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the women's heptathlon alongside compatriots Jessica Ennis and Louise Hazel at the Olympic Stadium on 3–4 August 2012. She finished in 13th place with a score of 6267.

In September, Johnson-Thompson was nominated for the "European Athletics Rising Star award". In October, she won the "Lillian Board Memorial Award" (for junior women) at the 2012 British Athletics Writers' Association Awards.

In the 2013 IAAF World Championships heptathlon, Johnson-Thompson finished in 5th place. After a first day which left her in 5th place, with a PB in the 200 m, she had an excellent second day with PB's in the long jump, javelin and the 800 m. However, she admitted afterwards that she wished she had set her target of finishing in the Top 8 with more ambition, having finished just 28 points away from bronze medallist Dafne Schippers.

First World Indoor and European medals
On 11 July 2014, Johnson-Thompson set a new long jump personal best of 6.92 m at the Glasgow Diamond League meeting, taking her to number 2 on the British all-time list for the event. She won gold at the 2014 edition of the prestigious heptathlon Hypo-Meeting in Götzis with a world leading personal best score of 6682 but missed the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the European Championships after suffering a foot injury.

Johnson-Thompson set a new British high jump record with a height of 1.97 metres at the British Indoor Championships in Sheffield on 14 February 2015, surpassing her previous record of 1.96 metres set on 8 February 2014. Prior to Johnson-Thompson, Debbie Marti's 1.95-metre jump had held the record since 1997. On 21 February, she set a new British indoor long jump record with a distance of 6.93 m at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix.

In August 2015, Johnson-Thompson finished in 28th place in the heptathlon at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing after three foul jumps in the long jump. She had been lying in second place to Jessica Ennis-Hill after the first day of events.

Johnson-Thompson competed at the 2016 Hypo-Meeting in May of that year, her first major competition since undergoing knee surgery in the autumn of 2015: she finished the competition in sixth with a score of 6,304 points, securing her place at the 2016 Rio Olympics by beating the qualifying standard of 6,200 points.

She missed out on a medal at the Games, taking sixth in the heptathlon, although her performance in the heptathlon high jump of 1.98 m set a new British high jump record, and would have been good enough to take gold in the stand-alone Olympic high jump competition.

In September 2016, UK Athletics confirmed that Johnson-Thompson had split with coach Mike Holmes, having been trained by him since 2008.

She subsequently moved to Montpellier, France, to be coached by a team led by Bertrand Valcin, joining a training group including Olympic decathlon medalist Kevin Mayer and double European heptathlon champion Antoinette Nana Djimou.

On 5–6 August 2017, Johnson-Thompson competed in the heptathlon at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics held in London. After moving to Montpellier, she was expected to land a podium position but was not able to surpass the 1.86 barrier in the heptathlon's high jump, with a successful jump at 1.80 m, which gave her 978 points. In a post heptathlon Day 1 interview, she stated: "High jump is one of my best events, I lost 200 points in just one event so that's massive. I'm massively disappointed but I'm trying to move on. In Day 2, long jump is one of my good events so hopefully I can do well there". Johnson-Thompson finished in 5th place with 6558 points. She also competed in the single high jump event, finishing fifth with a season's best jump at 1.95 m.

World and Commonwealth titles
In 2018, Johnson-Thompson won the World indoor pentathlon and the Commonwealth Games heptathlon titles, before going on to win a silver medal behind World and Olympic champion Nafi Thiam in the heptathlon at the European Championships, recording a personal best score of 6759 points, to move into the world all-time Top 25.

In May 2019, at the 45th Hypomeeting in Götzis, Johnson-Thompson recorded a new personal best of 6,813 in the heptathlon, taking her up to 18th on the world all-time list.

She won gold in the heptathlon at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar with a British record of 6981 points.

She was less successful at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo: a ruptured Achilles tendon threatened to disrupt her preparation for the tournament, which she came close to missing entirely. Having made enough of a recovery to actually participate, and was in fifth place after the first three events (including her favoured high jump), she suffered a tear in her calf muscle during the 200m, and fell. She got up and continued the race to the end, only to be disqualified on the technicality of having stepped (or rather fallen) out of her lane: in any case she was unable to compete in the remaining events.

Johnson-Thompson won the heptathlon at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England.

Johnson-Thompson won gold again in the heptathlon at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary; her second World Champion title.

Personal life
Since 2016, Johnson-Thompson has divided her time between her native Liverpool and the French city of Montpellier. She began dating fellow athlete Andrew Pozzi in 2018. She is a lifelong fan of her hometown football team Liverpool FC.

Statistics
All information from World Athletics profile.

Detailed heptathlon scores
Key:

National titles

 * British Athletics Championships
 * Long jump: 2014
 * British Indoor Athletics Championships
 * Long jump: 2014, 2018, 2019
 * High jump: 2014, 2015