There was no wiping the smile off Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s face as she sat atop the leaderboard after a history-making opening day at the Hypo-Meeting in Gotzis, Austria.
Having declared she had come here with the intention of “falling in love” with athletics again, Johnson-Thompson’s elation suggested she had achieved her goal in the space of just a few remarkable hours.
Competing in a heptathlon for the first time since relocating to Montpellier, France, last winter she had left the Olympic champion in her wake and set herself on course for a huge personal best as she builds towards a gold medal tilt at this summer’s London World Championships.
“I honestly didn’t expect it,” she said. “I just feel good – I feel like I’m enjoying it.
“Sometimes I think you can get overwhelmed by the heptathlon. I’m trying to approach the event differently and I’m surprised at the shape that I’m in because I didn’t feel like I was in top form.
The signs had been promising from the outset: a 100m hurdles personal best of 13.29 seconds, 1.95m in the high jump and then a mark of 12.72m in the historically problematic shot put – the furthest she has ever managed during a heptathlon.
By the time she crossed the line for the 200m, not even an enormous headwind could prevent her from finishing in 22.81sec to take the overnight lead on 4059 points.
Incredibly, just six points separates her from Belgium’s Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam (4,056) in second and Carolin Schafer (4,053), of Germany, who completes the top three.
What made the performance even more impressive was the fact that Thiam was 71 points ahead of her respective first-day score when winning gold in Rio and Schafer had set personal bests in all four events. Indeed it was the first time in history that three women had scored in excess of 4050 in a single day.
Well on track to smash her heptathlon best tomorrow, Johnson-Thompson looks a vastly changed character to the athlete nicknamed “Droopy” by her own coaches on account of her downbeat demeanour over the past couple of years.
The key, she says, is enjoyment.
“Normally I come here and I’ve over-exaggerated what I expect to get,” she said. “But this time I’m going to try and take the momentum from today into tomorrow and do the same.