Katarina Johnson-Thompson will not defend her title in Gotzis this year

Katarina Johnson-Thompson will not defend her Pentathlon title at the Gotzis Hypo-Meeting in Austria later this month.  She narrowly came second to Meghan Beesley in the 200m hurdles at the Great CityGames in Manchester last Saturday, but feels that a knee injury sustained in March has lost much preparation time.

In turn, Jessica Ennis-Hill will only return to heptathlon action when she is ready....coach Toni Minichiello said she "...had a bit of work to do..." before a decision will be made.

This will come as a big disappointment to all those athletics fans who were looking forward to a match between Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Jessica Ennis-Hill.  Gotzis was to be an early chance to achieve the 6,200 heptathlon points needed to qualify for Rio in 2016.

Katarina Johnson-Thompson wins Götzis heptathlon with javelin best

Katarina Johnson-Thompson won gold in the prestigious Hypo-Meeting in Götzis, Austria this weekend, as Great Britain’s latest heptathlon star laid down a marker with yet another personal best this year before the Commonwealth Games.

 Victory in the 800 metres saw the 21-year-old Liverpudlian pip Canada’s Brianne Theisen-Eaton to gold by 41 points (6,682 to 6,641) and the pair are expected to be favourites in Glasgow this summer in the absence of Jessica Ennis-Hill.

Johnson-Thompson lay second overnight in this event – the annual IAAF World Combined Events Challenge, which had a field far stronger than that expected at the Commonwealths – but moved into first by winning the long jump in the first of Sunday’s events, jumping 6.70 metres to Theisen-Eaton’s 6.59.

The Canadian reclaimed top spot in the javelin but Johnson-Thompson’s new personal best of 41.44m in the event left her primed before her favoured 800m and she duly delivered.