Historic day one at Hypo Meeting sees three athletes surpass 4050 in the heptathlon, while Damian Warner is top in the decathlon overnight

Katarina Johnson-Thompson recorded her best-ever day-one score in the heptathlon at the Hypo Meeting in Götzis on Saturday, achieving an impressive 4059 points on an historical first day in Austria.

Contesting her first heptathlon since finishing sixth at the Rio Olympics and making the coaching switch which saw her relocate to France, Johnson-Thompson narrowly leads Belgium’s Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam and Germany’s Carolin Schäfer overnight. It is the first time in the history of the seven-discipline event that three women have had scores of 4050 points or more at the end of the first day.

Johnson-Thompson had started out with a 100m hurdles PB of 13.29, with Thiam also going quicker than ever before with her time of 13.34. Schäfer clocked a 13.09 PB while Nadine Visser of Netherlands went quickest of all with a 12.78 Hypo Meeting best.

Just like they were in Rio, when they both cleared a world heptathlon high jump best of 1.98m, Thiam and Johnson-Thompson were again on top – the Briton soaring over a best of 1.95m and Thiam going one better to match her Rio mark.

Johnson-Thompson is weakest in the throws but, after a shaky start in the shot put, she improved to 12.72m – her best-ever throw in a heptathlon – while Schäfer recorded a PB of 14.76m and Thiam managed 14.51m.

Sitting third after the shot put, Johnson-Thompson propelled herself into the lead with a 200m run that came close to her PB for the distance – her 22.81 set despite a -2.9 headwind.

Thiam dropped one place to sit second at the end of the first day, her score of 4056 just three points behind Johnson-Thompson’s, while Schäfer, after setting PBs in all four events, is just another three points behind on 4053.

In the decathlon, world silver and Olympic bronze medallist Damian Warner leads a Canada one-two as he sits top with 4532 points from 21-year-old Pierce LePage, who continued to prove his promise with a score of 4379 after five events.

Warner clocked the quickest time in the 100m with his 10.35 from LePage’s 10.49 before they recorded 7.85m and 7.64m respectively in the long jump and had respective throws in the shot of 14.09m and 13.26m.

LePage cleared a 2.09m PB in the high jump compared to Warner’s 2.03m before Warner ran 47.49 for 400m and LePage 48.99.

Britain’s Ashley Bryant was pleased with his day-one performance which sees him sit 10th with 4216 points, while his fellow Briton John Lane is in 15th with 4115.

Full results can be found here.