Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s painful reality check on return to action

Katarina Johnson-Thompson suffered a painful reality check in her first heptathlon since tearing her calf at last year’s Olympics. She ended day one of the prestigious Hypomeeting with her knee badly bruised and her ambitions of defending her world title in July seriously blunted.

After four of the seven events, Johnson-Thompson sits in ninth place with 3,695 points – 245 off the lead held by the young Pole Adrianna Sulek, but broadly in line with her own expectations as she seeks to return to peak form.

“It hurts when you’re out here and the competitive juices come back,” she said. “It’s hard and frustrating that I’m not competitive but I’ve accepted that’s where I’m at right now.”

The good news at least is that Johnson-Thompson showed no lingering signs of her calf injury that forced her to hobble off the track during the 200m in Tokyo or the serious ruptured achilles that threatened to end her career in 2020.

But when asked whether she could take any positives from the first day, she was admirably blunt. “You have to,” she said, smiling. “But you have to dig pretty deep for them.”

Johnson-Thompson’s first event, the 100m hurdles, offered an uneasy portent of what was to follow. The 29-year-old’s personal best put her the third-quickest in the 23-strong field, but she was slowly away and having hit three hurdles was last in her heat in 13.80sec for a score of 1,007 points.

That put her 13th and there was no solace to be found in the high jump. At her best, Johnson-Thompson is world-class and holds the British record with a leap of 1.98m. But after clearing 1.77m, she failed three times at a modest 1.80m for 914 points – although she appeared unlucky on her first and third attempts.

“My knee is black and blue because I