European outdoor champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson moved top of the heptathlon world rankings with a hugely impressive score of 6,813 to win this weekend’s Combined events Hypomeeting in Götzis.
The 26-year-old’s victory saw her beat her previous personal best by 54 points for a hugely dominant win, beating Latvia’s Laura Ikauniece by 337 points, while Hungary’s Xeria Krizsan took third with 6469.
Johnson-Thompson now moves 13th on the all-time heptathlon rankings, leaving her strongly poised for a mouth-watering potential world championship encounter with Olympic and world champion Nafi Thiam, who skipped the meet due to recovering from injury.
There were contrasting fortunes for fellow Brit Niamh Emerson however, with injury forcing the 20-year-old to withdraw from the competition just two events in.
The Commonwealth champion was on top form from the off, however, equalling her PB in the opening 100m hurdles race on Saturday with 13.29 seconds, before going into the lead with a 1.95m performance in the high jump; 12 centimetres better than any of her competitors.
From then on she didn’t look back, with the only real stutter being in the long jump on Sunday after two fouls on the first and third jump, but still managed a strong 6.68m jump.
A 42.92m Javelin PB then set her up nicely for the final 800m event which saw her bag 2.08.28 to secure her overall 6,813 heptathlon PB.
“I wanted to come out and put solid performances out,” she said, “I was just trying to relax. I didn’t overthink things…I stuck to my key things and the 800m was a great learning experience too.
“To get over 6800 points is great. The crowd were really good. They follow you around from event to event and it’s my favourite place to compete in the world.”
Johnson-Thompson’s full results were as follows:
100m Hurdles – 13.29 (PB=)
High Jump – 1.95m
Shot Put – 12.95m
200m – 23.21
Long Jump – 6.68m
Javelin – 42.92m (PB)
800m – 2.08.28
Overall – 6,813 (PB)
Full results from the event can be found here
