Keely shines... but still can’t move past Mu
Athletics now has a rivalry for the ages
Coe and ovett. Bolt and Gatlin. Mu and Hodgkinson. At the World Championships in oregon on Sunday night, the latest great rivalry in athletics reached a new level as two 20-year- old stars squared off in a captivating, headto-head, home-straight duel for the women’s 800m title.
Athing Mu, the US athlete who has not lost an 800m in two and a half years, had to go deep in the pain cave to fend off the challenge of the one woman who seems capable of deposing her as the current half-mile queen: Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson.
Just eight hundredths of a second separated them — which equates to half the length of a pencil — with Mu winning gold in 1:56.30 and Hodgkinson left to wonder what might have been. ‘I’m obviously gutted,’ she said. ‘I came here to win the gold and it didn’t happen.’
At some point this week, though, perhaps in a conversation with her coach Trevor Painter or her longtime mentor Jenny Meadows, Hodgkinson will be able to step back and acknowledge something: she produced a performance that would have dominated the vast majority of global finals — if only she wasn’t competing against an all-time great.
But on Sunday night at Hayward Field, such perspective seemed hard to find — the look on her face not so much that of a 20-year- old who’d just won silver, but an athlete who felt she lost gold. ‘There have been no tears yet, I’ll do that in my own time,’ she said. ‘At the olympics, I was very happy with a silver because I was aiming for a medal. This year all I had on my mind was the gold.’
Such is the burden for a young gun. The goals get realigned, as do the expectations. In Tokyo last year Hodgkinson stunned so many with her silver medal and later celebrated with a test drive in the Aston Martin used in the James Bond film No Time to Die. Might she do the same again now? ‘I don’t deserve it yet,’ she said. Buried in that thought, and all the talk she’s had to listen to about her and Mu, is something Hodgkinson will be acutely aware of: you can’t have a great rivalry that is one-sided.
She has raced Mu three times in her career — at the olympics in
Tokyo, the Pre Classic in eugene last August and in the world final on Sunday — but has yet to beat her.
Still, she is getting closer. Never did the American have to go to the well the way she did here.
‘It shows I have improved since last year, I have got more strength,’ said Hodgkinson. ‘Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough this time. But that gap’s closing and hopefully one day I’ll get there.’
With a swift pace laid down from the outset, the first lap covered in 57.11 seconds, Hodgkinson tracked Mu, covering her move as the American shifted through the gears down the back straight.
Mu led by a metre as they turned for home but then drifted wide, allowing Hodgkinson to come up on her inside and race shoulder to shoulder, but the Briton just could not get past. The consolation at the end was that she knew she’d done everything right. ‘I took the shortest route, I sat in, bided my time, I don’t think I did anything wrong,’ she said. ‘It just wasn’t my time.’
Mu acknowledged that Hodgkinson had pushed her like never before. ‘Most of the races I run, they aren’t really tight,’ she said. ‘But I think this is just how any race would be if I run with someone else who’s really competitive.’
The two have spoken to each other here and there but, like any great rivalry, it doesn’t go beyond that. ‘I actually don’t know her very well, but I have a lot of respect for her,’ said Hodgkinson.
‘We’ll carry on doing what we’re doing, trying to beat each other. She’s a great athlete, we’re both so young and on top of the world. It’s something to be proud of.’
And amid any disappointment, Hodgkinson was also able to acknowledge something about that race, and this rivalry, which everyone watching would agree with: ‘It’s great for the sport.’
Her silver was followed by bronze for GB in the women’s 4x400m relay — the quartet of Victoria ohuruogu, Nicole Yeargin, Jessie Knight and Laviai Nielsen finishing in 3:22.64 and behind only the US and Jamaica.