Katarina Johnson-Thompson faces daunting deficit in battle for heptathlon gold with 800m to go

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Katarina Johnson-Thompson has been left needing to beat her big rival, Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam, by around eight seconds in the 800m of the women’s heptathlon on Friday night to win Olympic gold.
Johnson-Thompson’s personal best is just over six seconds faster at 2min 5.63sec, compared to Thiam’s 2min 11.79sec.
After leading overnight, Johnson-Thompson was predictably made to pay on Friday morning in the women’s javelin – one of her relatively weak events – for falling significantly short of her best in the long jump.
Johnson-Thompson had opened up at 9.05am UK time with a no jump and, with that putting her on the back foot, she opted for safety first on the second at 6.04m before a final leap of 6.40m, which was some 0.52cm off her personal best and still significantly behind the 6.54m she jumped while winning last year’s World Championship.
Thiam actually bettered Johnson-Thompson in the long jump by a single centimetre and, while that meant the Briton stayed in front overall, the large expected difference in the javelin duly did then materialise.
Johnson-Thompson’s throw  of 45.49m was a season’s best but again just below her standard in Budapest last year and probably leaves her needing the best 800m of her life when the athletes line up at 7.25pm UK time this evening and she aims to overhaul a 121 point deficit.
Thiam is going for her third straight Olympic title, while Johnson-Thompson is aiming to continue Britain’s golden multi-event history after Jessica Ennis-Hill, Denise Lewis, Daley Thompson and Mary Peters’ Olympic titles. An Olympic medal is the one remaining omission from her major championship collection after she tore her calf at the Tokyo Games following a ruptured achilles tendon in the build-up.
Great Britain’s 4x400m relay teams had earlier both qualified for the final on Saturday but only Max Burgin made it into the 800m final. Ben Pattison, a bronze medallist at the World Championship last year, got himself into a reasonable position going into the final straight but then looked unusually weary at what is usually his strongest part of the race.
Burgin still needed a personal best of 1min 43.50sec to qualify as one of the fastest losers after finishing third in his heat.
That gap of 121 seconds is bridgeable but only if Katarina Johnson-Thompson beats Nafi Thiam by just over eight seconds. The difference between their personal bests is 6.5sec but with gold on the line, it’s hard to see Thiam being beaten by 8sec, which equates to about 50m. But where there’s life, there’s hope …
So that means KJ-T will need to beat Thiam by 8sec in tonight’s 800m which starts at 7.15pm, though the leading group will be in the third race at approx 7.25pm. 
She now has the gold medal in her grasp. It’s 52.56 so she will lead Katarina Johnson-Thompson by 121 points going into the final event, the 800m. That means Kat would need to beat the double Olympic champion by eight seconds (or 40-50m) to climb from silver to gold. 
It goes tail up so she walks over the line. With her opening effort, though, she has enough in the bag now unless she falls in the 800m. 
She throws 54.04m which would give her a lead of 121 points. Yikes. She still has two more goes. That’s a cushion of 8.5sec in the 800m. 
Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico was first in 12.35 and USA’s Masai Russell second with 12.42.
“It’s very hard to take but I’m trusting God with it,” says Sember.
As we wait, let’s just do the maths. It’s a few years since she went as high as 59m. This year’s best is 53m . If she manages that today it would be worth 918 points which would give her a lead of 90. If that’s what happens, KJ-T would need to best her by just over six seconds in the 800m to take gold (barring a surge from third). 
KJ-T’s pb at 800m is 2.05.63 from last year’s world championships.
Nafi Thiam’s pb is 2.11.79 set this year in Rome. 
Recording 12.34sec in the semi-final. The Netherlands’ Nadine Visser was second with 12.43. 
She won by a decent margin in 12.39. Devynne Charlton was second. Jamaica’s world champion Danielle Williams was sixth. 
Running a personal best of 1.43.50. And that’s fast enough for a place in the final as the swiftest of the third-placed finishers. 
‘I’d love to see her just run at this,’ says Steve Backley. She doesn’t but she does throw 45.49m, a season’s best. 
I think that gives her 773 points for the javelin and hence a lead of 818 points before the defending champion Nafi Thiam goes in Pool B. 
Arop of Canada and Tual of France go through in first and second. The pace of that race means that Ben Pattinson is definitely out of the final. 
He says he just didn’t have it in his legs today and he knew pretty early in the race that he lacked the gas. He is obviously bitterly disappointed but vows to learn from the experience. 
She launched it on the wrong trajectory and as the tail flipped she walked across the line to make it a foul (even though it did land but well shy of 40m). 
He was fourth and only the top two automatically qualify. Sedjati and Masalela go through in a slow heat. 
Her javelin lands at 44.64m which is excellent given it’s her first go and her best for the season is 44.88m. Two more throws to come. 
The 22 heptathletes are split into two pools, the weaker and stronger throwers based on personal bests. Thiam is in pool B along with Lazraq-Khlass and the two Dutchwomen, KJ-T and Noor Vidts are in pool A.  Unlike the long jump in which both pools competed simultaneously on the two runways and pits, there is only room for one javelin pool at a time. 
South Africa fell just at the start of the second leg when Spain cut across. NIgeria were second and Belgium third. 
Botswana win with ease after last night’s 200m champion Letslie Tebogo went off like a rocket in the first leg. USA were third after fighting back from last place after the first leg run by the 16-year-old Quincy Wilson who looked pooped. 
It’s a very tough heat with Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago  and USA. Only the first three qualify automatically. 
Every extra metre is worth 20 points and given that Thiem’s PB is almost 13m longer than KJ-T’s, this is where the Belgian’s surge will surely come. In the 800m, every second better than your rival is worth 15 points. So can KJ-T pull off a personal best in the javelin that would give her enough points to claw back a lead on the track?
Top six in long jump
Another sub 6m effort after stalling in her run-up again. 
It was a very tight race for qualification after USA blazed a trail but Lina Nielsen brought it home in a last 100m burst to see off France, who go through in third, and Belgium, who have to wait, in fourth.
 
And she’s much closer to the board this time and she registers 6.41m for the second time. That should be only a three point advantage for Thiem over Johnson-Thompson, reducing her lead to 45 points. 
She gathers herself and shakes the stiffness from her shoulders. It’s a better one, not great but it keeps her in the fight. 6.40m, having taken off 16cm behind the board. 
She makes a massive 6.61m in an event that is not her forte. Taliyah Brooks also makes a mark on her third attempt, making 6.15m. 
And makes only 5.80m. She careered off to the right, too. Day two fatigue is really kicking in. 
She has feathers in her hair and is leading the crowd clapping at the top of the runway but twice she gets too excited and oversteps.
Nafi Thiem is up for her second jump and makes 6.41m. That’s a gut-punch for KJ-T who needs to pull something big out of the bag now. 
Not great but better than the last. She was 34cm behind the board and hence she managed only 6.04m, 1cm behind Thiem. She needs much more to giver herself a cushion for the javelin. 
The American makes only 5.93m after scraping the sand with a trailing hand. GB’s Jade O’Dowda leapt 6.33m, in second place for the event. 
The reigning champion hares down the track and takes off 30cm behind the board 6.05m. There is a tailwind of 3m per second which may have been why Katarina Johnson-Thompson made such a hash of her run-up. 
Has jumped 6.26m in the other group. There are two pits and two events going on simultaneously. 
She aborts after running through the board. She’s straight over to her coach, Aston Moore to try to address what went wrong.
*Actually it was measured and she scored 4.65m. She did take off but didn’t put anything into the jump and put her foot down sharpish. 
Three attempts for each athlete. Group B goes first, comprised of the better longjumpers among the multi-eventers. KJ-T is in this group and next up. 
Follow Luke Slater on marathon swimming, climbing, women’s golf and diving here. 
Good morning and welcome to live coverage of day two of the heptathlon from the Paris 2024 Olympics. Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Liverpool’s double world champion, who has finished 13th and sixth at her only two completed Games campaigns, is leading Belgium’s double Olympic champion, Nafi Thiem, by 48 points after four rounds – 100m hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200m – before today’s final three events, long jump, javelin and 800m. KJ-T has better personal bests in both the long jump and 800m than Thiem and has a better record in the long jump and javelin than third-placed Anna Hall of the United States but javelin is where Thiem can rack up a huge advantage with a pb of 59.32m compared with Johnson-Thompson’s 46.14.
Today’s competition begins with the long jump at 9.05am, followed by the javelin at 10.20am. Then, after a long kip, they return to Stade de France for the 800m at 7.25pm in which Johnson-Thompson has run six seconds faster than Thiem and where she would hope to make up any ground lost in the javelin. After season’s best performances in the hurdles and high jump and a personal best in the shot put, she could not be in better shape to have a genuine claim for gold today, Thiem’s experience and resilience notwithstanding.
Also on the track this morning we have the 4x400m men’s and women’s relay heats, the men’s 800m semi-finals and the women’s high hurdles semi-finals. But all eyes will be on the heptathlon as K J-T tries to emulate Denise Lewis and Jess Ennis-Hill and perhaps gain her golden ticket into the BBC commentary box for the next Games as well as a gold medal. “The eyes of the world are on you in a slightly different way at the Olympics, but Kat just needs to block that out,” said Ennis-Hill.
“You’re still competing against the same women on a track. The eyes of the world are on you in a slightly different way at the Olympics, but Kat just needs to block that out.”