It says something about Katarina Johnson-Thompson that she still believes in fairytales when she heads to the Olympic Games.

‘KJT’ has twice been crowned world heptathlon champion and become a household name.

But lady luck has repeatedly deserted her when Olympic summer rolls around, meaning she heads to Paris 2024 in survival mode.

“All I want to do is get to the start line healthy and get the chance I never got three or four years ago,” said Johnson-Thompson, who pulled out midway through the Tokyo Games through injury. 

“I don’t really care what happens, I just want to have that chance. That’s all I’m fighting for this summer, is to be on the start line healthy and able to put out the performance that I’m capable of at the time.

“I’m a big believer in fairytales. I’m a big believer in things happening for a reason."

Now 31, she first stepped onto the Olympic stage as a wide-eyed teenager with the best seat in the house to watch Jessica Ennis-Hill win heptathlon gold at London 2012.

After Louise Hazel, she was the second British athlete to be introduced to the Olympic Stadium and was greeted with a wall of noise.

“My introduction in the hurdles was the top, top moment of my career,” she says. “It still gives me the chills. Everyone was just happy that summer, there was a really good vibe and I feel like those Olympics were really, really cool.

“I was lucky enough to go at 19 and I’ll cherish those memories forever - watching Jess do her victory lap was when I decided to try to be a professional athlete.”

In terms of her Olympic fortunes, it has only been downhill from there.

Just at the point where she was growing fastest as an athlete she was hit by adversity - losing her father and suffering a knee injury that needed surgery in 2015.

At the Rio Olympics in 2016, she overcame a torn quad to sit fourth at the halfway point of the heptathlon. She got pulses racing with a national record 1.98m clearance in the high jump but struggled badly in the shot put and fell away, finishing sixth.

“In my head, I wasn’t confident at all,” said Johnson-Thompson. “I didn’t want to train. I didn’t want to compete in case I got injured. My head was a mess and I didn’t have time to grow and mature, to develop.”

Fast forward three years and the Liverpudlian looked in prime position to bounce back at Tokyo 2020. She uprooted her life to Montpellier in the south of France to work with highly-rated multi-event coach Bertrand Valcin and the gamble looked to have paid off when she captured World Championship gold in Doha.

Johnson-Thompson put in a stunning, 6981-point performance, laced with personal bests, that broke Ennis-Hill’s British record and installed her as one of Team GB’s biggest hopes for Japan.

But disaster struck once more in the shape of a ruptured Achilles in December 2020 that saw her start Olympic year in a wheelchair and that is how she finished it. Picking up a calf injury in the 200 metres, Johnson-Thompson was carried off the Tokyo track by medics, making for a heartbreaking image.

"To make it to the line was a miracle,” she said. “To not only do that, but to be on my way to putting a decent score together, is heartbreaking. I truly believed I was capable of winning a medal despite having up to half a year of missed training.

"More than ever, I am proud that I showed up, put myself out there and tried. It would have been very easy to shy away and pull out, to say I wasn't ready and blame the injury but I'm not that type of athlete or person.”

After hitting rock bottom with eighth at the 2022 World Championships, Johnson-Thompson completed a remarkable comeback to grab global gold in Budapest last summer.

That performance means that the British public expects once more. Despite a momentary scare that saw her pull out of June’s European Championships, she proved her fitness by clocking her best 200m time since 2019 at the UK Athletics Championships in Manchester.

After all of that, pressure isn’t something that KJT shies away from - especially as she’s going up against the two-time defending champion Nafi Thiam for gold.

“I always root for the underdog but it's a hard job to do yourself,” she said. “If more people believe you can do it, that gives you that added belief as well. 

"I’m in a good place, I believe that I can have a good summer and other people can see that too. I’m not complaining about that. I relish being in the conversation. It’s a very tough event but I’m happy to be back in the conversation.”

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