‘I wasn’t leaving in a wheelchair’: Johnson-Thompson on Olympics agony

• World champion heptathlete reveals injury despair
• ‘I don’t know how to explain how I feel,’ says 28-year-old

Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who saw her Olympic heptathlon dreams ended when she tore a calf muscle while in medal contention, says that refusing to get in a wheelchair despite being in huge pain was a last gesture of defiance after a tough year.

The world champion insisted that she believed she could still win a medal despite missing six months of training until disaster struck. But even after her injury she kept hobbling to the line, in echoes of Dereck Redmond at the 1992 Olympics, because she wanted to show she was “as gritty AF”.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WYYo0H