Olympic athlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson says tracing her family history on Who Do You Think You Are? was an “intense emotional journey”.
Katarina, who won silver in the heptathlon at the 2024 Olympics, will appear on Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC One on Thursday 6 August 2026 at 9pm.
In the episode, she traces her family to the Bahamas, where her father was from. She discovers that her great great grandfather Matthew emigrated to Miami in 1913. He settled in a city at a time of shocking racial segregation and the terrifying rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
Katarina said she didn’t know much about her family history before filming the episode: “My mum is quite big on looking into her ancestry through websites and things like that, so we’ve always wondered about our roots. She had a lot of information regarding her side, but unfortunately my dad passed away in 2017, and it was something I had huge question marks over. I didn't really know that side of my family that well, so I wanted to almost go and pay homage to him and his family, and find out more information for my own personal knowledge.”
Katarina said she was surprised by what was revealed to her on camera: “The Who Do You Think You Are? team made me get an American visa knowing that I was working out in America, but they didn't tell me anything until I literally sat down and recorded with the researchers who could explain it to me on camera.”
She described learning about her ancestors as “an intense emotional journey”: “I think what struck me was that it felt like a really good story at first. They were enslaved and then they were granted their freedom and then had their own land. I thought it was going to be a happy ending, but then it took a left turn into Miami and I discovered that they faced challenges like racism, and the feeling that they didn't really belong there. They faced a whole different challenge completely, and it made me really sad.”
However, Katarina said she was also proud to learn about her great grandmother Clara, who was a “strong, independent, great woman” who campaigned against racism and registered to vote in 1966 after the Civil Rights Movement won a historic victory removing barriers for African-American voters.
