The last time Katarina Johnson-Thompson took on Jess Ennis-Hill in a heptathlon she was afraid to talk to her for fear of doing anything that might distract her from her Olympic quest, writes Alex Spink in Beijing.
Advertisement
Where Katarina Johnson-Thompson steered clear of her older team-mate “in case I got in the way of her focus” during the London Olympics, this time around the two will compete on a level playing field.
Denise Lewis has suggested that the World Championships’ Women’s Heptathlon is likely to go down to the wire.
Three years on from being crowned Olympic champion in London and 13 months after the birth of son Reggie, Ennis-Hill wasted no time reminding a global audience of her class.
Ennis-Hill began a scorching morning at the Bird’s Nest stadium by clocking 12.91 seconds over the 100m hurdles and equalling her season’s best of 1.86m in the high jump.
American Barbara Nwaba suffered a painful start to the championships, meanwhile, smashing into the second hurdle and bravely picking herself before crumpling in a heap once more after hitting the fourth with a fierce thud.
“She had a great first two events”.
“Yeah, I am just really, really satisfied and I am surprised that I am first after four events”.
“I had some solid events and I’m really pleased to be in this position right now”, the 29-year-old Ennis-Hill told reporters. “Personally I thought they were the ones who decided if they were going to release it or not – so I really don’t have an issue with that”.
“I went into the competition thinking “I’m not ready for this and I’m just giving it my all”, but ever since then I think I have had a different mentality as an athlete”.
Johnson-Thompson loves to pour over an app of her potential scores prior to a competition but this time she and her coach, Mike Holmes, are not sure of what she is capable of achieving this weekend.
Neither will be thrilled with their height, but there was a significant consolation in that gold medal favourite Brianne Theisen Eaton managed only 1.80m and has dropped to fifth place.
Even without Theison-Eaton, there is the intriguing clash between Ennis-Hill and Johnson Thompson. “I had a bit of a faulty run-up so I’m happy that didn’t all end in tears”.
She then threw 13.73m in the shot. I was so relieved to get over.
Johnson-Thompson was not immediately convinced by Ennis-Hill’s post-2012 verdict that she would be the star of the sport by Rio 2016.
“It feels like I’ve been training one-and-a-half years for this”, she says, having missed out on both the Commonwealth Games and European Championships last year because of injury.
Advertisement
At London 2012 as a 19-year-old she admitted she was too nervous to speak to Ennis-Hill during competition. Her near World record performance in winning the European indoor pentathton this year shows how good she is. “I’m just glad to be here”.
