In-form O'Connor ready to embrace Worlds 'pressure'

Kate O'Connor begins her heptathlon challenge on Friday

Kate O'Connor is looking to cap the best year of her career with a new Irish heptathlon record at the World Championships in Tokyo.

After battling injuries to qualify for her first Olympics last year, the Commonwealth Games silver medallist finished 14th in Paris.

With valuable experience banked from her Olympic debut, the 24-year-old has begun the start of the Los Angeles 2028 cycle in superb form.

An impeccable indoor season saw O'Connor claim bronze in the pentathlon at the European Championships and silver at the World Indoors before setting a new national record at the World University Games to claim gold outdoors.

"The one thing about winning medals for these events now is that it does increase the pressure, the expectation levels from people watching on," O'Connor, who begins her heptathlon challenge on Friday (09:33 BST), told BBC Sport NI.

"I've got an idea in my head if things go really, really well, what could happen but I just want to turn up and just enjoy the competition.

"If I could, I would love to string together seven performances that I'm really proud of."

O'Connor's 6,487-point haul at the World University Games in Germany is the fifth best of 2025, although Olympic champion Nafi Thiam from Belgium and Great Britain's world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson have yet to record a score this season.

And the target for O'Connor in Tokyo is to surpass 6,500 as she steps closer to a second Olympics Games in Los Angeles in 2028.

"Qualifying for Paris last year was insane," O'Connor said.

"With the year that I had and the injuries that I had, getting there was the real goal, but what I took away from it was that I didn't want to just turn up to the next Olympics and participate like I did in 2024.

"This year has been a great stepping stone towards Los Angeles and that's the ultimate goal.

"I want to turn up and actually try to compete for a top spot."

Kate O’Connor with her father and coach, Michael O’Connor

The message in the team is a unified one. Alongside her coaches - her father Michael and Tom Reynolds - O'Connor says they are all "working towards the same goal" which ultimately will be qualifying for and competing in LA.

Along the way, there are other targets and what O'Connor has proven to herself this year is that under pressure, she can rise to the challenge.

"If I really think about it, there's a lot more external pressure than I've ever dealt with before but, weirdly, it still feels like the same amount of pressure that I would put on myself at any other competition beforehand."

"I probably learned that I'm pretty tough on myself and I expect a lot for myself.

"I've learned that I can deal with high-pressure situations and manage to pull things out of the bag when I need to, but whenever you're competing against girls at the highest level, you've got to expect that everybody's going to be like that."

'World University Games has given me confidence'

On her gold medal in Germany, O'Connor added: "I didn't feel like anything was amazing. I felt like everything was solid and a couple of subpar events as well.

"So it gave me a lot of confidence coming out of it to know I'm scoring in and around there without any great performances.

"Since then I've been training really well and I'm just really looking forward to getting out there and seeing what I can do at World Champs.

"I think it should be a good competition. It'll be very competitive, obviously, but I've been training well.

"So I'm just looking forward to seeing what kind of performances I could produce.

"We need to spend the next three years chipping away and try to make sure that we turn up there (Olympics) in the best possible shape that I can be in and try my best to then put it up to some of the other girls."