21 August 2023 , 18:40
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The Kat with the heart of a lion has become a hunter again, her coach declared last night.
The day after being crowned world heptathlon champion for a second time, Katarina Johnson-Thompson saw her odds to win SPOTY slashed from 66/1 to 7/2.
She had been unable to sleep on Sunday night, lying awake staring up at the ceiling as her mind tried to "make sense of it all”. Aston Moore, who turned Ashia Hansen and Phillips Idowu into world champions more than a decade ago, had no such problems. His thinking was clear.
“This is the greatest comeback I’ve coached,” said the 67-year-old Jamaican-born former Great Britain triple jumper.
“Given the injuries she’s had and the two years of absolutely nothing good happening for her, to come back and do this.. a lot of people probably thought it wasn’t possible.
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“I don’t think many come back from an Achilles rupture to win a world championship.”
Johnson-Thompson at work with her coach Aston Moore (AP)Johnson-Thompson did not look like she would either when she took her time over the hurdles and almost bombed out of the high jump after being held up by a rain delay on the first morning.
Thirty hours later, approaching the final bend in the last event, the 800 metres, she trailed hot favourite Anna Hall on overall points.
It was then she summoned a strength that, until now, only she and those closest to her knew she possessed.
(Michael Steele/Getty Images)Last night, after receiving her gold medal from World Athletics boss Seb Coe, she revealed the secret weekly sessions at Loughborough that had equipped her for this smash-and-grab raid.
“A lot of my training is technical but 800, you physically have to push through the pain barrier. Your weaknesses are something you need to work on," she said.
“It was a lot of aerobic stuff, short rest go again, short rest go again. It meant we were ready for that battle. I didn't think I could run that time. I'm not gonna lie. But I hate the feeling of not being ready to fight.”
(Getty Images)In those closing stages on Sunday evening Moore saw her metamorphisise from “spectator to hunter”, filling him with optimism about her prospects of a first Olympic medal next summer.
“Last year she was in a really bad place where she was just looking at other people picking up medals,” he said. “This time she was hunting for one of those places. That changes your psyche.
“On the first day it was ‘Okay, let’s see if I’ve still got this’. By the time we’d got past the shot (third discipline) she was like, ‘Right, this is business'.
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KJT's coach Aston Moore said it was the “greatest comeback" he had been involved with (Getty Images)“There has never been a moment with me when she sat down and said 'I can’t do this'. The confidence from the 800 really should take her all the way through to Paris.
"That was a different athlete out there. An athlete who wanted it, who said ‘this is mine and you’re not going to take it from me’.”