How Hodgkinson kept golden promise to win Olympic title

Never again.

Those were the words Keely Hodgkinson promised to herself as she walked off the track in Budapest 12 months ago.

Three global medals – each silver – in successive years by the age of 21 would to many be cause only for celebration.

That Hodgkinson’s initial reaction at last year’s World Championships was one of disappointment spoke volumes of her grand ambitions.

Intent on establishing herself, at the earliest opportunity, as one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes, the four-time European champion’s shifting reaction to each second-place finish has told its own story.

In 2021 it was hands-on-head astonishment. Just 19 years old, at her first global championship, the Tokyo Olympics offered an opportunity which may not have presented itself had the Games not been postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

But she was “gutted” with world silver 12 months later, and she could not hide her discontent after falling short in her titanic battle with Tokyo Olympic champion Athing Mu and current world champion Mary Moraa last year.

In Paris, aged 22, a moment she had pictured throughout years of gruelling training in her pursuit of 800m gold finally happened.

After glancing up at the big screen in the closing metres to ensure nobody was challenging, Hodgkinson took a cathartic swipe at the air as she crossed the line. This time victorious, she was left with her hands covering her mouth in a mixture of unadulterated joy and overwhelming relief.

“I have really grown over the last couple of years and this year was the year where you could really tell that I had tried to make that step up,” Hodgkinson said.

“The future is bright. I’m super happy to bring it home for everyone. It’s not just me, it’s a whole team effort and they know who they are. This is our gold medal.”

Hodgkinson was a keen swimmer as a child until, she says, her dad bribed her with a new pair of running shoes.

Inspired to pursue an athletics career at the age of 10 after watching Jessica Ennis-Hill win heptathlon gold at London 2012, she has become the first British woman to win an athletics gold since that moment.

At 13, Hodgkinson underwent an operation to remove a tumour from the left side of her head – non-cancerous but concerningly close to her spine.

Not only did it temporarily disrupt her training in 2015, affecting her balance and leaving her unable to walk, but it also caused her to become deaf in that ear.

Still progressing as a junior, Hodgkinson likely would not have even made it to Tokyo had the Games not been delayed.

The British record holder has since said she found the period following that sensational debut tough and she struggled with post-Olympics depression.

The Leigh athlete has also expressed the feeling of having to “grow up quickly” after being thrust into the limelight as a teenager and emerging as the new poster girl of British athletics.

But, surrounded by a Manchester-based team led by coaches Trevor Painter and his wife Jenny Meadows – a two-time world medallist – Hodgkinson has successfully navigated those challenges to establish herself as one of the sport’s biggest stars.

“The silver queen has stepped up to gold and she so deserves it,” Paula Radcliffe said on BBC TV.

“Keely Hodgkinson ran that race with the weight of expectation on her, everyone was hanging that medal around her neck, she knew that as well.

“I think that will open the floodgates now she has turned silver to gold.”

It is a tribute to Hodgkinson’s maturity and character that, even at this stage in her career, she is expected to win every race she contests.

The ‘big three’ have dominated recent global podiums, but until Monday Hodgkinson was the only one still yet to triumph.

It was Mu who denied Hodgkinson in Tokyo, and again by 0.08 seconds at the 2022 worlds in Eugene, before Moraa beat both athletes in 2023 to upgrade her 2022 bronze to gold.

But that series of near misses has only served to intensify the tenacious Hodgkinson’s determination.

Rather than demoralise, it has driven her on in pursuit of perfection, with this her ninth international medal.

Hodgkinson has rarely relented since first making headlines by breaking a 17-year under-20 indoor 800m world record at the start of 2021, before securing her Olympic debut where she broke Kelly Holmes’ 1995 British record.

She asserted herself further as gold medal favourite in Paris by improving her personal best to one minute 54.61 seconds at the London Diamond League in June, becoming the sixth-fastest woman in history.

Having made that golden promise to herself in Budapest, Hodgkinson kept her word in Paris.

“Keely was ready for it, she had to race smart. It was so tense, but she delivered,” Denise Lewis said on BBC TV.

“To hear those words, ‘Olympic champion’, when it rings through her ears, that feeling, that moment, that will live on forever in her head.

“It is that feeling of relief. That feeling is just so sweet, it’s so amazing.”

Hodgkinson’s improved personal best has taken her to within 1.33secs of Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 41-year-old women’s 800m world record.

It is the current longest standing mark in athletics.

But, following that London performance, Hodgkinson said she now felt that record was beatable.

Given the rate or her progress from a personal best of more than two minutes four years ago, it is not unrealistic to think she may have achieved that historic feat when the Los Angeles 2028 Games come around.

And, when it does, she will be the defending champion.

“Keely had this date etched in her mind since Tokyo,” Radcliffe said.

“This is by no means the pinnacle for Keely Hodgkinson. She still has a huge, huge long way to go.

“She could be back at the Olympics in four years, still only 26, and still an absolute force to be reckoned with.”

It had long felt a case of when, not if, Hodgkinson would take her place at the pinnacle of the sport. With that series of near-misses put to rest in dominant fashion in Paris, the world is now at the young Briton’s feet.