Johnson-Thompson can herald new world order

Every December Mark Butler, the BBC’s athletics statistician, sends out a suitably sport-themed Christmas card. Eight months ago, that was accompanied by another card containing a set of long-range predictions for the track events at the Rio Olympics, the most eye-catching of which was his prediction that the 2016 Olympic heptathlon champion would be Katarina Johnson-Thompson.

Tomorrow night in Estadio Olimpico there is all the potential for a repeat of Super Saturday in London four years ago, when in the space of a few minutes, Greg Rutherford, Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis-Hill all claimed Olympic gold medals on the greatest day in the history of British athletics.

Yet Butler believes that Johnson-Thompson, the 23-year-old Liverpudlian, is set to supplant her heroine and role model, Ennis-Hill, as the world’s greatest all-round woman athlete.