‘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…
