“Every single global heptathlon now is going to be an absolute dogfight,” predicts Anna Hall. “That is so exciting.”
The American beat Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson to gold at last month’s Gotzis HypoMeeting, amassing the fifth best points total of all time.
It continued the 22-year-old’s rapid rise in the multi-discipline event after she claimed her first major senior global medal at last year’s World Championships in Eugene.
There, she took bronze behind Belgium’s two-time Olympic and world champion Nafi Thiam and Dutch runner-up Anouk Vetter.
Hoping to improve on that achievement in August, Hall is predicting a titanic – and potentially historic – podium battle with her rivals in Budapest.
“Everyone is going to step up their game,” said Hall, speaking on the Warm Up Track podcast.
“I think, come the worlds this summer, we might see three, maybe four athletes over 7,000 points.”
The 7,000-point mark has only been exceeded on four occasions in history – most recently by Thiam, in 2017.
Hall admits that competing with Thiam and former world champion Johnson-Thompson, two of her sporting idols, has taken some adapting to.
But, in her first year as a professional athlete and with medals firmly on her mind, she has been forced to balance “fangirling” with business.
“Nafi and KJT were big, big inspirations to me, so it’s been weird to compete against them,” Hall said.
“For the first few days at the practice track at the Worlds I was fangirling and my coaches told me to stop.
“The respect and admiration is definitely still there but now it’s like, ‘I’m going to try and beat you’. My mindset is that it’s anybody’s competition.
“Before Gotzis I don’t think I’d ever been a favourite for an international meet before. I like being the underdog. It’s definitely different, but most of the pressure comes from myself.”
