Kate O’Connor’s main rival for the heptathlon gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, England’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, has pulled due to an undisclosed injury.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old 2024 Olympic Games silver medallist is hopeful she will be fit to compete in next month’s European Championships in Birmingham. She has been replaced by Niamh Emerson.<\/p>\n
Johnson-Thompson’s absence further increases O’Connor’s chances of delivering for Northern Ireland at the Games, which holds its opening ceremony tonight.<\/p>\n
Newry native O’Connor took silver behind Johnson-Thompson in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.<\/p>\n
While Johnson-Thompson made the podium at the Paris Games two years ago, O’Connor was 14th overall, but she has since kicked on spectacularly.<\/p>\n
In 2025, she won pentathlon bronze at the European Indoors, pentathlon silver at the World Indoors, heptathlon gold at the World University Games and then heptathlon silver in Tokyo at the World Championships, where Johnson-Thompson shared bronze.<\/p>\n
Last March she claimed pentathlon bronze at the World Indoors in Poland.<\/p>\n
Johnson-Thompson is one of nine members of the England athletics squad to pull out.<\/p>\n
Four more Olympic medallists \u2013 Dina Asher-Smith, Daryll Neita, Matthew Hudson-Smith and Amber Anning \u2013 are also out along with Zac Sneddon, Anna Purchase, Elliot Giles and Jona Efoloko.<\/p>\n
Johnson-Thompson said on social media: “I’m gutted to have to pull out of this year\u2019s Commonwealth Games. I was so looking forward to competing on home soil and having the chance to defend my Commonwealth title.<\/p>\n
“Although the injury I picked up earlier this season has improved, I haven\u2019t been able to get back to the level I need to compete at my best.<\/p>\n
“After discussing it with my team, we\u2019ve made the difficult decision to focus on giving myself the best chance of being ready for the European Championships, so working very hard to be there later this season.<\/p>\n
“Missing a championship is never easy, but I know it\u2019s the right decision. I can\u2019t wait to be back competing again soon.”<\/p>\n
Johnson-Thompson had been expected to target a hat-trick of Commonwealth Games titles having previously won gold in the Gold Coast (2018) and Birmingham (2022).<\/p>\n
Additional reporting: PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kate O’Connor’s main rival for the heptathlon gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, England’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-564524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}