Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s remarkable bronze papers over Team GB cracks

For two days, the Briton has been there or thereabouts for a podium place and going into the energy-sapping final event, the 800m, she knew she had to beat Taliyah Brooks by just under six seconds to win a medal.

In the end, her margin over the American was 5.79sec and, with it, came the anomaly of sharing the final spot on the podium on the same points tally. It wasn’t until a bronze was around her neck that she allowed herself to glow in the medal success.

“What the hell was that?” she asked afterwards. “I’m so happy that neither of us lost by a point because that would have been absolutely horrendous.”

Such a dramatic denouement seems apt for Johnson-Thompson, who has been beset by more than her fair share of setbacks in major competitions, not least of all inside this National Stadium in Tokyo. It was here at the Olympics four years ago that a calf injury in the 200m forced her out of the competition. When she returned to the venue earlier in the week, she burst into tears.

“It was hard to come in,” she said, “because of memories of coming through here… having to get crutches out and not finish the heptathlon.”

And yet for all the adversity throughout her career, it is a testament to her longevity – an 11th world or Olympic appearance. Now 32, an athlete who made her major debut at London 2012, she has two world titles and an Olympic silver to her name.

This time it was drama of the best kind, adding a bronze that was every bit as gutsy as her past championship performances. No wonder the tears flowed as the big screen showed her final tally of 6,581 matched Brooks’s.

By the time the pair crossed the line, American Anna Hall was streets ahead both in the 800m and the competition as a whole, while Ireland’s Kate O’Connor produced the performance of her life for the silver despite a knee injury which saw her forgo her final throw in the javelin.

Johnson-Thompson was two-and-a-half seconds shy of her time for Olympic silver last summer but even a PB wasn’t going to catch O’Connor.

It took Britain’s medal tally to three for these World Championships thanks to Jake Wightman’s comeback silver in the 1500m and Amy Hunt’s shock second place in the 200m, but it cannot paper over the cracks of what has been a poor championships.

On a calamitous night for the British relay contingent, the men’s 4x100m team failed to qualify for the final after Eugene Amo-Dadzie went off too early on the anchor leg to leave Jona Efoloko reaching for air with the baton. While that quartet’s downfall was dramatic, the women’s 4x400m finishing dead last in their heat was more eye-catching. You have to go back to 1999 for the last time they didn’t make the World Championships final in this event.

More worrying still, if Keely Hodgkinson does not win gold today, it will be Britain’s first World Championships without a gold since 2003. It is also worth noting that at the last two outdoor global championships, the team ended up with 10 medals. In Paris, GB won medals in all five relays, in Budapest four. Only the women’s 4x100m have a shot at a relay medal.

Max Burgin had threatened to be in medal contention in the 800m, but he came up short. Others to have faltered are Matthew Hudson-Smith, who had looked a solid bet for a medal in the 400m but failed even to make the final, and Molly Caudery, who rolled her ankle before the pole vault qualifying. Emile Cairess was another talked about as a medal contender in the marathon but he pulled out before the finish.

The scarcity of medals puts the pressure on Hodgkinson, but the Olympic champion’s gold is far from guaranteed. Her camp are concerned about her ongoing back issue and the distance between the training track and the venue, a situation Hodgkinson called “not perfect”.

Another medal hope in the eight-women final is her training partner Georgia Hunter Bell, while George Mills is an outside bet for a medal in the 5,000m.

Photograph by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images