Athletics
World Athletics Championships 2023: Katarina Johnson-Thompson wins dramatic heptathlon gold
The Brit holds off a bold challenge from the USA's Anna Hall to win the competition by 20 points - the narrowest margin in World Championships history. Hall takes the silver while Netherlands' Anouk Vetter wins bronze.
Britain's Katarina Johnson-Thompson has triumphed in the heptathlon at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest (Sunday, 20 August).
The 2019 world champion has had a difficult few years that included hobbling out of the Tokyo 2020 heptathlon competition with a calf injury, but victory in Hungary shows she is back to her best form with one year to go until Paris 2024.
In fact, the 30-year-old needed to be at her best to fend off the challenges of USA's 2022 world bronze medallist Anna Hall and the Netherlands' Olympic silver medallist Anouk Vetter, who were both within touching distance of her score before the start of the final event of the competition: the 800m.
With Hall needing to beat Johnson-Thompson by around two-and-a-half seconds in the 800m to secure gold, the USA heptathlete stormed out of the blocks opening up a considerable gap over her British rival. But Johnson-Thompson dug deep, keeping close to Hall and finishing in a personal best time of 2:05.63, less than two seconds slower than Hall's 2:04.09.
In the end, the result in the final was the closest in World Championships history with Johnson-Thompson's combined total of 6740 just 20 points above the 6720 that earned Hall the silver.
"This has been one of the most gruelling heptathlons I've ever done," Johnson-Thompson said after her victory. "The delayed start yesterday, the long day, then I got about three hours of sleep last night. But all these girls deserve such huge respect."
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