Illness proved a veiled blessing for the former hurdler, as AW discovered

Now part of a strong group of multi-event athletes coached by Julie Hollman at Loughborough University, 19-year-old Katie Stainton is pleased she decided to stick with heptathlon.

Like many talented multi-eventers, the 2013 English Schools and England Athletics under-20 heptathlon champion excelled in a number of events before committing to the seven-event discipline. In 2010, Katie claimed silver and bronze over 300m hurdles in the UK School Games and England Athletics under-17 Championships respectively before claiming bronze at the English Schools the following year. However, the Birchfield Harrier was ill in 2012 so couldn t do much running and so she started doing some long jump and high jump to stay in the sport.

The next year, Katie broke six metres for the first time in the long jump and cleared 1.70m in the high jump. After trying her hand at heptathlon, she finished the year as the highest-ranked under-20 heptathlete in the UK with 5221 points.

The talented teenager has not looked back and improved to 5356 points this year to finish 2014 second only to double world junior champion Morgan Lake in the UK age group rankings.

Reflecting on her move to heptathlon, Katie explains: My training programme is now set to heptathlon. I like the fact that heptathlon is so varied and if you have one below-par performance it isn t all over and you can pull it back with a good performance in another event. After being ill and taking a year off long hurdles to do heptathlon, it s a decision I m glad I made!”

“I like the fact that heptathlon is so varied and if you have one below-par performance it isn t all over and you can pull it back with a good performance in another event”

Having been sportshall all-round champion in 2010, it is not surprising that Katie has ultimately ended up in combined events. This year she was selected to represent Britain at the European Cup Combined Events, which was something she was really proud to experience.

I was so happy to see the hard work starting to pay off. However, I think my proudest moment was when I hit 6m in long jump for the first time in 2013,” she reveals.

Having wanted to go to Loughborough from a young age, Katie is enjoying studying and training in a professional environment with experienced coaches and talented training partners.

Although Hollman is her main coach, she is coached by Fuzz Ahmed for high jump and David Parker for javelin.

I m studying a sports performance and coaching degree, which fits in well with my training. Loughborough are very supportive and I m on their sports scholar scheme. Our group gets on well and enjoy getting the most out of our sessions together. Two of my training partners, Jess Tappin and Ben Gregory, were in the Commonwealths and I ll be working hard to make the team in 2018,” she explains.

Clearly inspired by the high standard of combined events in the UK, Katie says: There really are some strong athletes and it is great to see them doing well on the world stage.”

Katie is quite sure of what she needs to do to improve. As I was a 400m hurdler, I ve always been working on speed on the track combined with endurance so my track events are good and obviously my long jump too. My main weaknesses are the throws as I really didn t do any throwing before last year. They are improving though, although I still have quite a bit of work to do on them,” she explains.

Despite her ambitions to continue representing her country, Katie also likes to represent her club when she can. I enjoy all the events, although I always like to do long jump in league competitions for my club, Birchfield Harriers,” she reveals.

You can find further performance stats on Katie on Power of 10 here.

Support young athletes via the Ron Pickering Memorial Fund, see rpmf.org.uk

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