On this day in 2015: Katarina Johnson-Thompson celebrates gold and GB record
Katarina Johnson-Thompson celebrated gold and claimed the British record in the pentathlon at the athletics European Indoor Championships in Prague, on this day in 2015.
The then 22-year-old broke Jessica Ennis-Hill’s British record to take the title, but fell agonisingly short of the world record.
Johnson-Thompson amassed 5,000 points, just falling short of Ukrainian Nataliya Dobrynska’s haul of 5,013, to land the first major title of her career.
The previous year, a stress fracture to her foot ruled her out of the Commonwealth Games and European Championships.
Johnson-Thompson got her campaign off to a flying start with her third then-personal best over the 60 metres hurdles in less than three weeks, before setting a then-new championship record to win her second event, the high jump.
In the shot put she dropped to second overall, before scoring a then-championship best on her first attempt at the long jump.
In the 800m, needing two minutes 11.86 seconds to break the world record, Johnson-Thompson looked on course for the first three laps, but fell off the pace as her legs tired.
She still came home in time to break Ennis-Hill’s mark by 35 points, though.
Ennis-Hill’s three-year-old British record of 4,965 points was consigned to history, but immediately afterwards Johnson-Thompson was left wanting the world record title.
“I was gutted, instant regret,” she said at the time.
“If someone had said to me, ‘You’ve got 5,000 points and a gold medal’, at the beginning of the day I would have taken it, but because everything was going so well and I was so close, I think that’s what made me so sad.
“I could have got it if I had pushed a little bit more. It’s regretful, but its still a good score. It’s just that I accumulated