Keely Hodgkinson could rival Jessica Ennis-Hill as one of Britain’s transcendent stars of an Olympic Games and, ahead of her first championships of 2024, has revealed how the London 2012 heptathlon changed her life.
When she was just 10 years old, Hodgkinson had already shown considerable promise as an all-round athlete, combining cross country with some fun in track events, but she had switched her focus to swimming in the early months of 2012.
“I just fell in love with it [athletics] – I didn’t like it for a while – I was doing well, but I just didn’t feel like training,” she says. “I was swimming a lot… and when I looked at 2012 I saw Jess competing. She was the golden girl everywhere, and that really inspired me to go back, to actually want to do the heptathlon. I played with the spear. But then I thought: ‘I’ll just stick to the 800 meters’.”
It was a choice that within six years had been rewarded with the European under-20 title and that within nine years had seen her standing on an Olympic podium in Tokyo with a silver medal around her neck. Hodgkinson has since followed that up with two World Cup silvers and will be an overwhelming favorite in Rome, where she starts on Monday to win her fourth European gold.
No wonder she starts to say with a smile, “But I haven’t let you down yet, have I?” in response to the question of whether we will see an even faster runner this summer. She started her outdoor season last month by emphatically beating Kenyan world champion Mary Moraa and believes her Olympic preparations may have been boosted by a major winter injury.
It was previously known that Hodgkinson had suffered a setback that forced her to miss the World Indoor Championships, but it has now emerged that tears to a knee ligament and tendon, which extended into her hamstring, forced her to miss nine weeks of running in between. November and January. “The first two weeks I couldn’t do cardio because I couldn’t bend my knee,” she says. “Then I was on the bike and the cross trainer. It was torture. I had to be patient. It wasn’t ideal. It was a freak accident.
“My physiotherapist thinks I sprained my ankle [training] in Font Romeu and the damage reached up to my knee. I kept running on it, thinking it was something else, and then it tore. I had to trust the process.
“That was a blessing in disguise – it allowed me to work on my endurance for weeks on end, get stronger in the gym and improve my speed. I really feel like this year is hopefully the best I’ve ever been. When I compete in the Europeans I will always respect the competition, but I have a four second lead over the next person. How do I keep motivation high? I want to attack every race… to see how much I can push myself.”
It will all likely lead to a parade in Wednesday’s final, but it is refreshing to see Hodgkinson seize the opportunity to win another major title at a championship that has been somewhat diluted this year by its proximity to the Olympic Games in Paris.
The sporting sands in this country have undoubtedly changed in recent years, leaving athletics with a significant challenge to break into the mainstream consciousness, especially outside of the Olympics.
Hodgkinson believes recent moves by World Athletics to introduce prize money for gold medals at the Olympic Games and launch the lucrative new biennial World Ultimate Championship event are encouraging steps.
“I don’t think anyone would turn down $50,000 [for a gold],” she says. “I love it. I know the Olympic motto is about competing as amateurs, but we are now at the point where if you compete in the Olympics, you are not an amateur. You are a professional. That’s in every sport.
“It is known that athletics is quite unstable if you do not win the top medals. It has to start at the top, but hopefully flow down.” Hodgkinson, who went to school in Manchester with the English lioness Ella Toone, then cites the example of women’s football. “They have put so much money into it since the European Championship, it is now going through to the clubs and now helping the grassroots. Hopefully we can do something similar.”
Hodgkinson himself is only 22, but it is possible that Hodgkinson will be joined in the Olympic 800m team by 17-year-old Phoebe Gill, who produced a phenomenal run of 1 minute 57.86 seconds last month but opted out of the European to miss championships to focus on her university exams. Gill will compete in the British Championships later this month, which also doubles as an Olympic selection race.
Hodgkinson says her jaw dropped when she heard about Gill’s “insane” time, which was within three seconds of her British record and the best ever by a European under 18.
“She’s so young – I wouldn’t put any pressure on her at all,” says Hodgkinson. “She just needs to take her time, not get carried away and keep doing what she’s doing. It clearly works. She just needs to have fun.”
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