Katarina Johnson-Thompson is hoping to claim the only medal missing from her trophy cabinet at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The Team GB heptathlete, who is the defending world champion, has not finished on the podium in any of her three Olympic Games to date.
A teenage KJT finished 14th in London as Jessica Ennis-Hill stormed to gold, ended up sixth in Rio four years later before then suffering heartbreak in Tokyo with a torn calf.
And viewers tuning in to watch Johnson-Thompson’s latest quest for gold may well be wondering how the heptahlon scoring system works.
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Here is everything you need to know.
How does heptathlon scoring work?
The scoring system for the heptathlon was devised by Austrian mathematician Dr Karl Ulbrich.
The system essentially translates times, heights and distances into a recordable score.
The formulae for the scoring system has been constructed such that each event has a designated benchmark performance which scores 1000 points, and a minimum recordable performance which scores 0 points.
For example, a time of 13.85 or less in the 100m hurdles gives a score of 1000 points; 14.46 results in 900 points, 15.32 gives 800 points and 16.12 gives 700 points.
The benchmarks for 1000 points in each of the seven events are as followed:
Heptathlon 1000 point benchmarks
- 100m hurdles – 13.85s
- High jump – 1.82m
- Shot put – 17.07m
- 200m – 23.80s
- Long jump – 6.48m
- Javelin – 57.19m
- 800m – 2:07:63
Successive constant improvements results in gradually increasing scores from the benchmarks above.
The winner, unsurprisingly, is the athlete who finishes with the highest number of points at the end of the seven events.
Who holds the record for the highest heptathlon score?
USA’s Jackie Joyner-Kersee holds the record for the highest ever heptathlon score, with her 7291 points coming in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
The double-defending Olympic athlete Nafi Thiam is third on the all-time list with 7013 points.
Johnson-Thompson has a personal best of 6981, whilst Ennis-Hill’s golden triumph in London in 2012 was her career-best score of 6955 points.
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