World Athletics Championships: Katarina Johnson-Thompson ready to race ahead of Jessica Ennis-Hill

Going head-to-head: Katarina Johnson-Thompson says there is no nasty rivalry with Jessica Ennis-Hill
Ian Walton/Getty Images
By Matt Majendie21 August 2015

Katarina Johnson-Thompson is running, hurdling and jumping into the unknown.

On the eve of the World Championships, she should have been the runaway favourite to win heptathlon gold.

After nearly breaking the pentathlon world record at the European Indoors in Prague in March, her training before the trials was near perfect until she suffered the misfortune of a quad injury.

Since then it has been a case of playing catch-up, meaning she arrives in Beijing without competing in the heptathlon this year. As a result, there is a question mark over how her body will hold up in competition.

"I feel fit and healthy and injury free but I don’t know what the competition will be like," she admits on the eve of her second World Championships.

Johnson-Thompson loves to pour over an app of her potential scores prior to a competition but this time she and her coach, Mike Holmes, are not sure of what she is capable of achieving this weekend.

The gold medal is, however, a definite target and not one that the 22-year-old shies away from: "A British one-two is possible as anything can happen with the heptathlon.

"My aim is to win a medal and, of course, I want that to be a gold but I need to ensure I do myself justice and put together the seven events over two days."

Beijing will be the first time since London 2012 that both Johnson-Thompson and Jessica Ennis-Hill have competed against each other in a heptathlon.

In truth, that contest was totally one-sided, Ennis-Hill at the peak of her powers en route to a gold and Johnson-Thompson then a somewhat awestruck 19-year-old whose 15th place was barely noticed amid the fanfare for her team-mate.

It is a rivalry that has been built up — although not through their own doing — even more so by the fact that injury and childbirth have kept them apart until now.

Even at the top of their game, there will never be the fractiousness of the 1980s tussles between Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett. They will happily sit down together in action, while their coaches are both in regular phone contact.

And, in truth, Beijing is merely a stepping stone to their proper duel at next year’s Olympics when Johnson-Thompson hopes to be clear of the injury question marks and Ennis-Hill will have her first full winter training block behind her.

"It’s never going to be a nasty rivalry," she says. "I’ve always looked up to Jess and she has been good to me. But obviously we want to beat each other."

On paper, the pair are strong medal contenders, with Canada’s Brianne Theisen-Eaton the biggest threat. Despite her laid-back demeanour, Johnson-Thompson is itching to compete in China.

"It feels like I’ve been training one-and-a-half years for this," she says, having missed out on both the Commonwealth Games and European Championships last year because of injury. "I’m just glad to be here."

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