Diamond News

KJT not ruling out a California dream in LA in 2028 – but now ‘ready for’ Paris

KJT not ruling out a California dream in LA in 2028 – but now ‘ready for’ Paris

Independent
Katarina Johnson-Thompson says she has not ruled out going for a fifth Olympics in 2028.The 31-year-old made her debut on home turf at London 2012 coming 13th, finished sixth four years later in Rio, but was forced to pull out of her third Games after sustaining a calf injury in Tokyo.Johnston-Thompson enters these Olympics as the reigning world heptathlon champion and insists she has no intention of slowing down post-Paris.The Liverpudlian said: “That phrase doesn’t come to mind, ‘one last push’. I feel like I’m growing into myself, and the longer that I’ve been doing the sport, the more I know about myself and about how to be ready for it.“The longer I’ve done it, the more I feel like I understand what my body needs, how to get to a good performance and quieten out everything else.“So I feel like I’m getting stronger and stronger in the sense of I know how to do it better than I did 10 years ago, so it saddens me at the thought of having all of this knowledge and then stopping.“As long as I’m competitive I’ll continue.”Johnson-Thompson pulled out of the European Championships in Rome at the start of June after only three events. View this post on Instagram A post shared by KJT (@johnsonthompson)She then missed a fortnight of training and had a number of injections in her Achilles, but did compete at the UK Athletics Championships in Manchester and the London Diamond League last month, finishing sixth in the long jump with a 6.54-metre effort.Her final taste of action before leaving for France was at the England Athletics Championships in late July, with a wind-assisted 13.54 in the heptathlon 100 metres hurdles and 1.81 metres in the high jump.Johnson-Thompson says her tendonitis is “ongoing, but at the minute it seems to be OK”.This time around, the two-time world champion will have another Briton in the mix in the form of Olympic debutant Jade O’Dowda, the younger sister of Cardiff City and Republic of Ireland footballer Callum.The 24-year-old Oxford athlete shared a