London 2017: Katarina Johnson-Thompson misses out on a medal as she finishes fifth in the heptathlon
British star 78 points out of the medals as she is made to pay for her flop in the high jump that cost her the chance of winning gold
KATARINA JOHNSON-THOMPSON missed out on a World Championship medal as she finished fifth despite a brave attempt to go for glory in the 800 metres.
Johnson-Thompson was ultimately made to pay for flopping in the high jump as she ended the two days of competition 78 points out of the medals.
Johnson-Thompson ran a season’s best of 2mins 08.10secs over the two laps as she tried to snatch bronze from Holland’s Anouk Vetter.
But she was not able to get enough distance between herselves and her rivals, forced to settle for fifth with 6558 points and left to think about what might have been.
Olympic champion Nafi Thiam of Belgium claimed the gold with a score of 6784 points, 88 points clear of second placed Carolin Schafer of Germany.
Vetter took the bronze, thanks in part to a huge javelin through over 55 metres that saw he leap up to third in the penultimate event.
Johnson-Thompson said : “I feel like one of these days it will happen for me.
“There is a lot to work on. It’s been completely stripped down…my mental attitude, the way I approach training, the way I approach each competition.
“Everyone said it was going to take a couple of years but I wanted it to come together at London 2017. But I feel very positive for the future.”
Ultimately it was Johnson-Thompson’s major flop in the high jump on day one that has cost her a podium chance, when she failed to clear 1.86m, meaning her one and only clean jump of 1.80m was the score that counted.
That was 18cm lower than her best – and had she got anywhere near her usual performance levels in the discipline she would have have been pushing for the world title.
She was lying 13th after the shot-putt, but Johnson-Thompson clocked the fastest time in the 200m, the final event of day one, when she ran 22.86 into a headwind to thrust herself back out the standings.
Earlier, the 24-year-old had just missed out on a personal best in the hurdles, clocking 13.33sec in her 100m hurdles – just four-hundreths of a second outside her lifetime best run – to leave her well placed in sixth after the first event.
Johnson-Thompson was bidding to medal to finally banish the memories of two years ago when she blew her chances by failing to register a score in the long-jump.
The 24-year-old sat in second place behind eventual winner Jessica Ennis-Hill overnight, going into the long jump, which is her strongest event.
But the Merseysider got a red flag in all three of her jumps, costing her vital points, and she was forced to endure the rest of day two before finishing down in 28th place.
She has moved to France to change her training programme, and believed it had helped get her in shape to take on the best in the world this year.
But it was not to be as once again she failed to produce consistently across all seven disciplines when it matter most.