Heptathlete JohnsonThompson wins her first Olympic medal

Britain's heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson strained every sinew to perform the run of her life and take Olympic silver, soon after the women's 100m relay team missed out on gold by seven hundredths of a second following a fumbled final handover.

- Daniel Boffey

The electrifying performance in the final 800m event won a first medal at a Games for the 31-year-old double world champion and delivered a moment of joyous redemption after repeated Olympic disappointment.

It had followed relay sprints in which Britain's women's team pushed the US to the finish line and the men took bronze in the 4x100m behind Canada and South Africa, after the US favourites mangled a handover.

Johnson-Thompson, known as KJ-T, had set herself the task of running over eight seconds quicker than Nafissatou Thiam to take the Belgian's Olympic title. It was not to be on a track made slick by heavy drizzle in Paris but the performance earns her place alongside Jessica Ennis-Hill and Denis Lewis as among the British Olympic heptathlon greats With just the 800m race to go, she had found herself 121 points behind the Belgian, who had thrown a season-best in the javelin earlier yesterday.

The scintillating end to the seven-event discipline came as a teenager known as the Terminator claimed a shock Olympic gold for Britain in men's sport climbing and Team GB's sprinters teed up an exhilarating final night of athletics today in the the Stade de France.