Representing Great Britain, Johnson-Thompson won the heptathlon gold medal at the 2019 World Championships, breaking the British record with a score of 6,981 points which ranks her at No.

Katarina Mary Johnson-Thompson was born in the Woolton suburb of Liverpool on 9 January 1993,[3] the daughter of English mother Tracey Johnson and Bahamian father Ricardo Thompson (died November 2017).

[5][6] She spent the first year of her life in Nassau with her father after her parents separated, then returned to the United Kingdom to live with her mother in the town of Halewood near Liverpool,[7] where she attended St Mark's Catholic Primary School and became interested in athletics.

[8] She later moved with her mother back to Woolton, where she attended St Julie's Catholic High School and became close friends with future actress Jodie Comer,[9] before going on to study sports science at Liverpool John Moores University.

[12][13] Johnson-Thompson broke Jessica Ennis' British junior record at the Multistars competition held in Desenzano del Garda, Italy in May 2012.

[14] In June, Johnson-Thompson achieved the 'A' qualifying standard for the Games by scoring a new personal best of 6,248 points at the TNT – Fortuna Meeting held in Kladno, Czech Republic.

[16] At the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics held in Barcelona, Johnson-Thompson chose not to compete in the full heptathlon competition to save herself for the Olympics; instead she took part in the long jump—winning a gold medal with a jump of 6.81 metres—and the 100 metres hurdles.

[21][22] On 11 July 2014, Johnson-Thompson set a new long jump personal best of 6.92 m at the Glasgow Diamond League meeting, taking her to number 2 on the British all-time list for the event.

[23] She won gold at the 2014 edition of the prestigious heptathlon Hypo-Meeting in Götzis[24] with a world leading personal best score of 6682 but missed the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the European Championships after suffering a foot injury.

[33] She subsequently moved to Montpellier, France, to be coached by a team led by Bertrand Valcin, joining a training group including Olympic decathlon medalist Kevin Mayer and double European heptathlon champion Antoinette Nana Djimou.

[39] She was less successful at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo: a ruptured Achilles tendon threatened to disrupt her preparation for the tournament, which she came close to missing entirely.

Having made enough of a recovery to participate, and in fifth place after the first three events (including her favoured high jump), she suffered a tear in her calf muscle during the 200m and fell.

She got up and raced to the end only to be disqualified on the technicality of having stepped (or rather fallen) out of her lane: in any case she was unable to compete in the remaining events.