It has ended in tears before, of course. They fell after all those knocks and they fell again after all those medals of redemption. But nothing like these. Nothing like those that fell after the fall.
She rolled on to her front, her hands over her face, and then she heaved deep and often into the hot surface of lane four. Katarina Johnson-Thompson, that poor woman. That poor, broken queen of the heptathlon. All the talents an athlete can have and none of the luck.
So she lay there a while, before reaching back and grabbing the spot where the stabbing had come from as she cruised the bend of a 200m race.
Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the broken queen of the heptathlon, has all the talent but no luck
It was her right calf, not to be confused with the shredded left Achilles that was meant to rip up her chances, or any of the other body parts that have failed over the years. Nor the scars you can’t see - the deeper ones. The mind ones.
But about that. Remember when folk used to say she lacked bottle? When they pointed to the three botched long jumps that blew a gold at the worlds in 2015, and the dive from contention at the Rio Olympics, and attached their labels. Choker was one of them.
You wonder what they may have thought in 2018 when she won three big titles, and 2019 when she became the best in the world. Or what they may have made of her forcing herself to be at these Games, having gone through the trauma of knowing a ruptured Achilles had wrecked her best chance of winning an Olympic gold medal.
Johnson-Thompson was cruelly taken out of the heptathlon after injuring her calf in the 200m
Maybe it registered with a few them that somehow, and against all sensible logic, she had got herself into podium contention here at the precise point when the calf pinged. Maybe it didn’t.
But in any case, that was the moment, 10 seconds after leaving her blocks, when Johnson-Thompson had moved into the lead of her heat. A lead that followed her recording of the second quickest 100m hurdles time of her life at 13.27sec, a respectable clearance of 1.86m in the high jump, and her second best ever shot put of 13.31m.
With the run going as it was, she was possibly on track to end the day in silver medal position. Astonishing. One hell of a long way was left to go, but one hell of a tale was brewing. And then the stab, which led to a hop, a stutter, a fall and the death of a dream.
What came next can be dressed up as Olympic spirit, but that always feels a little
