Defending champion calls early halt to her World Indoor pentathlon but insists she is making big progress, while Belgian Noor Vidts strikes gold and Holly Mills comes agonisingly close to bronze

There was no glorious medal-winning comeback for the defending champion at the World Indoor Championships but Katarina Johnson-Thompson was left enthused by her pentathlon performance, even though it came to an early end on the opening day (March 18) in Belgrade.

The 2019 world heptathlon champion admitted that her late decision to accept a wild card invitation for Serbia had been on something of a “whim” after making some particularly encouraging training progress under her new Florida-based coach Petros Kyprianou in recent weeks.

And, despite calling it a day when sitting in sixth place after four of the five events and opting to sit out the closing 800m, she insisted invaluable work had been done in a competition which was won impressively by Belgian Noor Vidts.

This was Johnson-Thompson’s first test since the Tokyo Olympics, when a calf injury halted her medal charge after she had fought her way back from a ruptured Achilles at the end of 2020. The 29-year-old was grinning from ear to ear after putting herself in the arena once more.

“I agreed to do this about two weeks ago and it was on a whim as training was going really well,” she said. “I’m in a good place and I just thought ‘why not?’.

“I think with the last couple of years – with Covid and with my Achilles rupture and my second surgery – it’s just been a long time to [wait to] get stuck in and compete and I think this is going to help me enormously going into the summer.

“It’s one of those times when you have to put yourself out there and see what happens. I just happen to have done it on a big stage but I’m hard enough now to just take this as a learning experience.”

Learning new techniques under Kyprianou, this was not only the ideal chance for Johnson-Thompson to put training work into practice but also for her to get to know her mentor better.

“It was important that I had this preparation with Petros,” she added. “He’s really good in competition and that was really good to find out. You never really know someone until you go through a heptathlon or a pentathlon with them so I was really happy about that.

“When you look at it, I’m ready for the summer – I just need competition practice and I haven’t had that in about three years. My body is completely fine. I just knew I couldn’t give it my all in the 800m and I knew I wanted to focus on this next chapter. The 800m is just [all about] guts, really, and I’ve got a lot of them already.”

Had she really expected to be in medal contention after six months out?

“I love to dream,” she said. “It took me a long time after Tokyo to get this feeling back and I can’t give up on opportunities when I’m feeling good. I would have given my left leg to do this last year so who am I to say no? I’ve no regrets because I’ve learned a lot.”

Vidts was ultimately a more than worthy winner as Belgium proved they possess another serious multi-events talent to go alongside Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam.

Vidts, a European indoor silver medallist and Olympic fourth placer last year, produced personal bests in the 60m hurdles (8.15), long jump (6.60m) and 800m (2:08.81), a season’s best in the high jump (1.83m) and victory in the shot put (14.03m) which combined to give her a massive world-leading score of 4929.

Poland’s Adrianna Sulek was second with a national record of 4851, while Kendell Williams just landed bronze, the American’s 6.69m pentathlon long jump championships record in the penultimate event proving to be just enough to hold off the challenge of Holly Mills.

The Briton, competing in her first major senior championships, had needed to be around 10 seconds quicker than Williams going into the 800m and fell agonisingly short – missing a podium place by just seven points (equivalent to around half a second) with a total of 4673 after running a PB of 2:09.97 to her rival’s 4680 (2:19.23).

Mills had enjoyed the perfect start, finishing joint-fastest with Vidts in the 60m hurdles thanks to her PB of 8.15. Johnson-Thompson was sixth in the same race and clocked 8.45.

In the high jump Mills went over 1.71m at the third time of asking and 1.74m at the first time but couldn’t clear 1.77m. Johnson-Thompson entered the competition at 1.77m and cleared it immediately, before going over 1.80m at the second attempt and then 1.83m straight away. There was frustration that 1.86m could not be conquered by an athlete whose outdoor PB is 1.98m but then encouragement in the shot put, where she threw 13.02m – her second-best indoor performance ever.

Johnson-Thompson only managed one legal effort – a second-round 6.08m – in the long jump before calling it a day ahead of that 800m, while Mills’ leap of 6.28m moved her into fourth overall before the fireworks of that closing event.

“I really did give it absolutely everything,” said Mills. “I can’t look back and think ‘what if’. I went at it with everything I had and today it wasn’t enough, by half a second. Obviously that’s gutting but I did exactly what I set out to do.”

Warner leading the way – but only just

Canada’s Damian Warner held a slender lead after day one of what is shaping up to be a fascinating men’s heptathlon competition. The Olympic decathlon champion sat on 3649 following the opening four events, just two points clear of Swiss Simon Ehammer, while Australian Ashley Moloney sat in third on 3555.

Warner led right from the off, clocking a PB of 6.68 in heat two to finish fastest in the 60m, with Moloney also clocking a PB (6.70) to win the opening heat. Ehammer was third-fastest in 6.72, also a lifetime best for the discipline.

Warner further extended his lead with a second-round leap of 8.05m in the long jump, but European U23 long jump champion Ehammer stuck right on his shoulder with 8.04m. There was another PB for Moloney, whose 7.82m was fourth-furthest overall.

Warner widened the gap at the top to 58 points after being fourth-best in the shot put with 14.89m, Ehammer managing 14.23m and Moloney 13.89m, yet the advantage was whittled away by the Swiss athlete’s high jump PB of 2.05m, Moloney clearing 2.02m and Warner 1.99m.