Day seven begins with the armies at a height. Wednesday saw an England medal rush with the judo team successfully weighing in, Emily Campbell adding to her Olympic weightlifting silver with gold in Birmingham and Katarina Johnson-Thompson defending her heptathlon title.
But perhaps the highlight of the day was seeing Scotland’s Eilish McColgan emulate her mother’s 1986 victory as she held off Kenya’s Irene Cheptai in the home straight to win the 10,000m gold.
After winning her first heptathlon in four years, KJT later revealed she had also been struggling with the loss of her grandmother Mary last week.
“Unfortunately, she passed away a few days later [the World Championships], so it’s been a tough week,” said a tearful Johnson-Thompson. “I’m happy to go through with it. It has been particularly difficult because the recent home champions at the Glasgow Indoors [in 2019] she was here, so it was very hard not to see her face in the crowd.”
Regarding her career-extending win, she added: “It feels great, this competition has served me so well and I got my first medal here and that shot started my career at the time. I’ve had a tough few years , hopefully this is the start of my next new career!
“It’s been tough, I’ve had moments where I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going. To come out here and just go through it and get the gold medal, I’ve proven to myself that it was worth going through.”
