A brilliant brace of gold medals from Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Laura Muir made it a memorable opening night for the hosts at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow on Friday (1).
It has been nine years in coming, but finally the talented all-rounder from the home of The Beatles has made it to number one spot in the world as a senior.
Katarina Johnson-Thompson went into the penultimate pentathlon event just 13 points down on leader Yorgelis Rodriguez of Cuba following an indoor shot PB of 12.68m.
Heading into pentathlon event number three, Katarina Johnson-Thompson was on course for a comfortable victory ahead of Ivona Dadic and Yorgelis Rodriguez and Erica Bougard.
It was a disaster in the high jump that cost Katarina Johnson-Thompson dearly in the heptathlon at last year’s IAAF World Championships. The British record holder in the event with 1.98m, she could only manage a 1.80m clearance and finished out of the medals in fifth. Compounding the agony, she proceeded to place fifth in the high jump final with 1.95m.
Two-time US indoor champion Erica Bougard snatched a narrow lead in the opening event of the pentathlon, finishing 0.01 ahead of teammate Kendell Williams in 8.07 in heat two of the 60m hurdles. That converted to a score of 1113 and a lead of two points.
The last time Katarina Johnson-Thompson contested a pentathlon, at the 2015 European Indoor Championships in Prague, she finished a tantalising 13 points shy of Nataliya Dobrynska’s world record tally of 5013.
Today marks one week to go before the focus of the athletics world shifts firmly to the IAAF World Indoor Championships Birmingham 2018.
Austria’s Ivona Dadic smashed her own national record when taking the European indoor pentathlon silver medal in Belgrade earlier this year. Here the 23-year-old all-round talent fondly recalls that PB-laden performance.
Raven Saunders' world lead in the women's shot put and an unprecedented fourth title in the pentathlon by Kendell Williams highlighted the first day of action at the NCAA Division I Indoor Championships in College Station, Texas, on Friday (10).
Two world indoor bests highlighted the first full day of competition at the US Indoor Championships, staged in the 1561m altitude of Albuquerque, New Mexico on Saturday (4).