Nafissatou Thiam in the heptathlon javelin at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)
Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam successfully defended her heptathlon title at the Paris 2024 Games, becoming the first combined events athlete in history to win three Olympic gold medals.
She didn’t have it easy, though, and was put under pressure from world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson from the outset, eventually winning by just 36 points: 6880 to 6844.
The only time Thiam has had a smaller winning margin was when she earned the first of her 11 major continental titles, the 2016 Olympic gold, which she took by 35 points from Jessica Ennis-Hill.
Two-time world indoor champion Noor Vidts earned her first major outdoor medal, taking bronze with a PB of 6707. For the first time ever, five women bettered 6600 as Annik Kalin finished fourth in a Swiss record of 6639 and USA’s Anna Hall placed fifth with 6615.
Kalin took an early lead, clocking a PB of 12.87 in the 110m hurdles. Vidts also started with a PB, running 13.10, while Johnson-Thompson ran a season’s best of 13.40. Thiam, meanwhile, started with 13.56.
Johnson-Thompson matched Thiam in the high jump, both women clearing 1.92m as the Briton moved into the overall lead. Hall cleared 1.89m to put herself in medal contention, while Vidts got over 1.83m.
Thiam set an outdoor PB of 15.54m in the shot put to take the overall lead, but Johnson-Thompson continued to apply pressure by adding half a metre to her PB with 14.44m, putting her within 50 points of the Belgian.
Johnson-Thompson’s 23.44 clocking in the 200m – the fastest of the day – put the two-time world champion into the overall lead at the end of the first day, 48 points ahead of Thiam, who clocked 24.46 in the 200m.
Hall ended the day in third overall, five points ahead of Vidts, both women dipping inside 24 seconds in the 200m.
Thiam and Johnson-Thompson produced almost identical marks in the first discipline of day two, leaping 6.41m and 6.40m respectively in the long jump. Colombia’s Martha Araujo was the top performer in that discipline, sailing out to a PB of 6.61m. Kalin jumped a solid 6.59m, though it was some way down on the 6.84m PB she set at the European Championships. Vidts, meanwhile, matched Johnson-Thompson’s jump of 6.40m.
The two gold medal contenders produced season’s bests in the javelin, Johnson-Thompson throwing 45.49m to Thiam’s 54.04m, the best of the day. The differential in distance once again gave the Belgian the overall advantage, meaning she went into the final event with a 121-point lead, which translates to about 8.3 seconds in 800m terms.
The difference in their PBs, meanwhile, was six seconds.
The battle for bronze was even closer with Vidts, Kalin and Hall all in contention.
Hall, one of the fastest 800m runners in heptathlon history, took out the pace as expected, covering the first lap in 58.8 while Johnson-Thompson followed in 1:00.2, a second ahead of Thiam. Hall held on to cross the line in 2:04.39 while Johnson-Thompson took almost a second off her PB with 2:04.90. But Thiam had also produced the race of her life, clocking a PB of 2:10.62 to hold on to pole position.
It gave Thiam a winning score of 6880 – the highest of all of her Olympic title-winning scores. Johnson-Thompson claimed silver, her first Olympic medal, with 6844 – the second-best score of her career behind the 6981 British record she set to win the 2019 world title.
Vidts made it two Belgians on the podium, taking bronze with 6707, 68 points ahead of Kalin.
Sofie Dokter of the Netherlands set a PB of 6452 to finish sixth, then there was a three-way tie for seventh place between Araujo, Hungary’s Xenia Krizsan and Emma Oosterwegel of the Netherlands, all scoring 6386.
“I feel very special,” said Thiam. “I didn’t cross that line and think that I made history. I simply thought about all this pain, hard work, sacrifice, all those moments where I felt lonely, all of that paid off and I’m really grateful for that.
“In sports you give everything you have in every moment. You have to take whatever the sport gives you, and it can be nothing. But today it’s a lot, and I’m grateful for that.”
After two days of battling for gold, Johnson-Thompson was relieved to end the competition with her first Olympic medal.
“My team has helped me become a proper heptathlete,” she said. “I’m not just a high jumper and a long jumper; I’m now a full heptathlete, and I can continue to get PBs.
“Now I just want to relax and breathe, and watch the athletics. I’m a huge athletics fan and I haven’t been able to see any of it. I’ve found something that I love and that’s heptathlon.”
Jon Mulkeen for World Athletics
| WOMEN'S HEPTATHLON MEDALLISTS | ||
| 🥇 | Nafissatou Thiam (BEL) | 6880 |
| 🥈 | Katarina Johnson-Thompson (GBR) | 6844 |
| 🥉 | Noor Vidts (BEL) | 6707 |
| Full results | ||
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