Sportsister meets Katarina Johnson-Thompson

October 16, 2024

As a journalist if there is one thing that I can’t live without it would be my Dictaphone. If I asked the same question to a musician she might say her guitar, a doctor might say her stethoscope and a teacher might say her books.

So when I ask a sportswoman, a World Champion Olympic heptahlete to be more specific, I didn’t expect nail varnish to be at the top of her list.

“I love doing my nails!” Beams Katarina Johnson-Thompson through her thick scouse accent. “I absolutely hate it when they’re bare. Red is usually my favourite for competitions, but I’m not too precious about the colour. Although I probably wouldn’t ever paint my nails gold, silver or bronze because that would seriously be setting myself up for a fail!

“I should keep all the colours in my bag and then depending on how I do, quickly paint them. For a really bad day I could just go with black!”

I think the black is safe for now; bad days out on the track are something that the 20 year old from Liverpool hasn’t experienced too many of late.

In August, Katarina finished a gutsy fifth at the World Championships in Moscow, narrowly missing out on a bronze medal, but broke no less than four of her own seven records and knocked an impressive three seconds off her personal best in the 800m.

“That gutsiness is probably her prized asset,” said her coach Mike Holmes afterwards. “It’s digging in somewhere that a lot of people haven’t got. It’s a bit special.”

Prior to the Worlds, Katarina also won the long jump at the Anniversary Games in July setting a season’s best leap of 6.46m, and she also secured the gold medal in the U23 European Championships earlier in the same month.

“I just wanted to progress this season and build on what I did last year,” she tells me. “I hadn’t competed much before the U23 European’s since the Olympics, so the last two months have been pretty unexpected.

“My confidence is high in as much I do believe I could have done even better in Moscow if I didn’t have my niggling injuries, (she tore ligments in her ankle in May), I could have got a good high jump and maybe medalled at the Worlds instead of finishing fifth.

“For now I just have to keep working hard. I really need to work on my throws which is the bane of my life at the moment. I worked on them all last season, I’m always especially trying to improve my shot-put - I find that the hardest thing about being an athlete is when your body won’t do what you want it to do, so my shot-put…yeah…it’s a huge work in progress!”

A huge work in progress with the aim, ultimately to medal at an Olympic Games. “I definitely have my sights set on Rio. My favourite memory so far was when I qualified in Prague for London, and at the age of 19 walking out infront of a home crowd was incredible.

“Competing for your country at an Olympic Games is the best thing ever and I think winning a medal at Rio is not out of reach by any means, but I’ll only be 23 - I think I’ll be at my peak for the 2020 Games so realistically its more likely to happen then.”

Come 2020, Katarina will be 27 years old, the same age that Jessica Ennis-Hill won her Olympic gold, and with much comparison to her fellow heptathlete already, especially after she smashed her youth record by 97 points in May of this year, it’s difficult not to once again see the resemblance and potential for the Liverpudlian to follow in the Olympic Champion’s footsteps and become her natural successor.

Even Ennis-Hill’s coach Toni Minichiello says, “She is better than Jessica pound-for-pound. If you look at what Jess did at her age as a junior, Kat’s performed better than that every single time. If she keeps going, she’ll probably be better.”

And Katarina’s response? “I think it’s inevitable to be compared to Jess throughout my career. It doesn’t bother me, I’ve become so used to it now!

“Our sport is individual and there are so few of us to compare one another to. I’m sure when Jess was my age she got compared to people like Denise (Lewis) and to be honest for me, there are worst people to be put in the same sentence with!

“I just need to make sure that I keep doing what I know I’m capable of doing and then I can become my own athlete in my own right.”

Want to read the article in full? Just click here to download our September digi mag and you can!

Lizzie Flint, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine

Photo credits: Nike. www.facebook.com/NikeTrainingClubUK

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