She is getting there. Slowly and painfully Katarina Johnson-Thompson is getting there. She is even feeling some pleasure now, however solely after an terrible lot of tears and ache.
Here, on this chilly night in Surrey, she is waiting for the alternatives of a brand new year. To a brand new teaching partnership in Florida, to the World Championships in Oregon in July and to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in August.
All being effectively, and what an assumption that’s, she is going to defend the heptathlon gold medals she received in the latest editions of every.
Katarina Johnson-Thompson has opened up on her agony after her Tokyo Olympics damage
All being effectively, and what an assumption that’s, she is going to defend the heptathlon gold medals she received in the latest editions of every. ‘They are only two weeks apart but I think I can give it a good go,’ she says. ‘I know what I am capable of and I know I have things to look forward to.’ And that’s essential, as a result of wanting backwards to the latest previous doesn’t do her a lot good.
She doesn’t discuss positives across the Tokyo Olympics as a result of as she sees it there weren’t any. There have been lots in what she overcame to get there however not on the bottom. Not in the best way her Olympics ended, weeping right into a sizzling observe and pushing away that wheelchair.
So no, she doesn’t need to lean on these outdated cliches, about rising stronger in 2022 from what didn’t kill her in 2021. About rising from the adversity of a ruptured achilles, from which she progressively recovered throughout eight months, solely to then wreck a calf simply as essentially the most extraordinary of Olympic medals was coming into sight.
She would not discuss positives from the showpiece as a result of as she sees it, there weren’t any
No, she doesn’t need to spout any of that guff now that she is able to speak. It took months earlier than she may have this form of dialog with out welling up so she desires to do it truthfully. She desires to elucidate what it’s actually like when all of it goes so brutally fallacious. And extra so when the temptation is to consider how completely different all of it may need been.
‘I disagree with that whole concept about “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”,’ she tells Sportsmail half an hour into this interview.
‘I used to really buy into that. But what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. It simply breaks you and makes you extra susceptible and makes you extra resentful of what occurs. I assume you simply have to simply accept it, transfer on and dwell. It doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you extra ready for the subsequent time one thing unhealthy occurs in your life, positive.
‘But stronger? No. I felt vulnerable and resentful because something terrible happened to me on the biggest stage of my life.’
Speaking to Sportsmail, Johnson-Thompson has defined what it is like when all of it goes fallacious
The phrases simply dangle there some time, heavy and uncooked. She turns up her palms and what else are you able to do?
An Olympic Games is at all times a story of those that acquired what they needed and those that didn’t and when Tokyo 2020 was postponed by a year it was inevitable that some would endure from vicious swings of misfortune.
Was anybody from the British cohort extra negatively affected than Johnson-Thompson? In 2020 she was match and prepared, a world champion on the wave of three main gold medals in two years. In 2021, she wasn’t.
And in fact she thinks about it in these phrases. Anyone would, even when they wouldn’t essentially admit it. But Johnson-Thompson has at all times been extra of an open ebook than most, sporting her vulnerabilities nearer to the floor after so many arduous moments within the earlier years of her profession.
In 2021, she was match and prepared on the high of her gam, however the subsequent year, she all of the sudden wasn’t
If there’s a unhappy irony it was that these difficulties appeared to be behind her. After all that point in Jessica Ennis-Hill’s shadow, and these accidents and capitulations in main championships, Johnson-Thompson was flying between 2018 and 2020. A serial winner. But then, in December 2020, the achilles went on her leaping leg, the left, and as Johnson-Thompson reveals, it may have ‘been a career-ender’.
That she by some means made it to Tokyo was spectacular. Far extra so was what initially performed out in Japan with the second finest performances of her life within the 100m hurdles and shot put both aspect of a stable excessive soar. That after a handful of low-key warm-up occasions and barely just a few weeks of full coaching.
‘After the high jump I honestly thought I had a chance,’ she says. Not simply at a medal, which might have been absurd in its personal proper, however gold. It would have been a comeback for the ages, however what occurred subsequent was the brutal bit, with Johnson-Thompson moving into the lead of her 200m warmth just for the calf on her proper leg to ping. Seven sorts of athletic expertise and no luck by any means.
Months after crying into the night time, she is shaking her head. ‘The truth?’ she says. ‘I won the World Championships in Doha in 2019, I was in the shape of my life, and then Covid happened. Games go back a year and I ruptured the achilles on my jumping leg. Come back from that and my calf goes. I spent a while trying to process all that and the way life could have been and yeah…
She won the World Championships in Doha in 2019 and says she was in the ‘shape of her life’
‘It was s*** luck. No other way to describe it. I am not dwelling on it but it wasn’t a constructive expertise. Look, the entire expertise of getting there within the form I used to be is a giant factor.
‘It genuinely offers me confidence going ahead to know what I may do in such troublesome circumstances as a result of it was a severely arduous time after I did my achilles. But I didn’t study something from Tokyo aside from it was s*** and arduous work didn’t repay.’
She provides: ‘I am an emotional person and it took me a long time to talk about Tokyo without welling up. It is why I needed that time away, to not look at athletics at all. It didn’t sit effectively with me that I couldn’t end. Even ending final, I simply needed to complete the occasion as a result of we put in a lot work (after the achilles rupture) and I couldn’t get any consequence out of it.
‘My value was always that hard work pays off and sometimes it just doesn’t. Sometimes life isn’t truthful and that’s what I used to be coping with.’
Johnson-Thompson believes she did not study from Tokyo as a result of it was ‘s***’ and arduous work
There have been a tough few months after Tokyo, seeing out a year by which she ‘spent more time on crutches than off them’. The calf damage, which transpired to be three separate issues, together with a recurrence of a problem first sustained on the 2018 Commonwealth Games, required surgical procedure.
Another main adjustment got here on the teaching aspect, with Bertrand Valcin, the architect of her success, taking a brand new submit with the French Athletics Federation that meant he may not oversee her day-to-day coaching in Montpellier. After 5 years with Valcin, Johnson-Thompson is now working with Petros Kyprianou in Florida.
‘It feels like a new chapter,’ says Johnson-Thompson and, in gentle of latest traumas, that’s most likely factor. ‘It is sad that the chapter had to come to an end with Bertrand. He was a perfect fit for me at a time when I needed him the most. He changed my character, he changed my outlook on life.
‘Now I am a different athlete and I have taken that on. I go forward with someone who has a different personality, a different approach and he can push me in a different way for this cycle.
After five years with Bertrand Valcin, Johnson-Thompson is working with Petros Kyprianou
‘It is a bit reinvigorating. It isn’t a case of, “Here we go again, pick yourself up”, it’s about new surroundings, new problem, new voice. It is certainly useful to me getting again into it and beginning the method once more.’
As ever with Britain’s most gifted athlete, the intrigue will likely be in the place it leads.
On her day she will beat the nice Nafi Thiam, the double Olympic champion, and that could possibly be the prize showdown of the World Championships in July, earlier than the problem of a second heptathlon instantly afterwards in Birmingham.
Johnson-Thompson, 28, confirms she is going to then skip the European Championships on the finish of the summer season.
She has confirmed that she is going to skip the European Championships on the finish of the summer season
Beyond that, and solely then, will she enable her ideas to float to Paris 2024 and one other shot at profitable the one medal to elude her. She will likely be 31 by then.
‘I don’t need to have a look at the Olympics but,’ she says and at that it’s nearly time for her to go. She is at a gig to advertise Muller and which means smiling for cameras on the again of arduous chats.
‘It was a difficult year,’ she provides. ‘But I do know what I’m able to and I do know I can obtain what I would like in my life if I’m wholesome. I’ve issues to realize and chase however it’s all a distinct timeframe to what I assumed it could be. Now I’ve to respect the previous however not dwell on it. I’ve a lot to look ahead to.
Katarina Johnson Thompson, a Mullerlight Ambassador, was talking at an occasion to advertise the Müllerlight Smooth Toffee.