After the Olympics were cancelled, heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson was at a loss. She tells Vogue how she’s reset her expectations, and rebooted her life
On 3 October 2019, after two days of events at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Katarina Johnson-Thompson lay exhausted on the asphalt, a new world title to her name. In a performance that stunned the athletics world, Johnson-Thompson stormed to first place in the heptathlon, beating the previous British record , four of her own personal bests and securing the sixth-highest heptathlon score in history.
Most athletes are well versed in failure and used to having to bounce back time and again. But few have experienced so many setbacks so young as Johnson-Thompson. From 2014, she suffered a series of major injuries – a cracked foot, quad tears and a knee injury that required surgery – and called 2015 the worst year of her career. By the time she reached the Rio Games in 2016, she felt defeated. “Mentally, I didn’t want to be at the track in case I got injured,” she says.
At Rio, Johnson-Thompson ended in sixth place, and afterwards “sort of spiralled out of control,” she says. “I left my coach and stopped looking for one. I was ready to quit.” On a whim, she moved alone to Montpellier. A year later, her father, who lived in the Bahamas, passed away. “I decided to press reset on my whole entire life,” she says of the spontaneous uproot. “I didn’t know the language. I left my coach, my two dogs, sold my house.” It paid off.
At her lowest point in the pandemic, she believed her “purpose in life had stopped. I thought, ‘What’s the point in going to training; what’s the point in even trying to keep this level of fitness?’ And then I found when I had a week off, I missed it. When I started to set little goals, it got easier to get up and get out of bed and attempt to start the day. Just because I don’t have a competition where I can show off and get that accolade, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the process.
She has found other ways to fill her time, too. Namely doing up the house she bought in Liverpool, where she has spent lockdown with her boyfriend, fellow athlete Andrew Pozzi, and two dogs. “I’m back in the place where it all started for me, but in completely different circumstances.” Not least that she is now a hero of her home town, much like her best friend and former schoolmate Jodie Comer. Does she get recognised? “Yeah, for sure. In Liverpool more than anywhere else.
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