A star is born
Teenager Hodgkinson smashes GB record to earn 800m silver (even if she can’t quite believe it)
Six months ago, shortly after breaking the world indoor under-20 800 metre record, Keely Hodgkinson was asked whether she fancied competing at the Olympics this summer. “Yeah, I suppose,” she said, without much conviction. “It would be silly not to try and qualify for the Olympics, but I really would like to win the European juniors.”
That she is now an Olympic 800m silver medallist and the fastest British woman in history – quicker than double Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes – shows how staggering her progress has been. No longer a name for the future, Hodgkinson is a star right now.
So quickly has the 19-year-old emerged that she does not even receive a penny in British Athletics funding, instead relying on a multimillionaire philanthropist to pay for her to be a professional athlete. That is guaranteed to change after she became the first British track and field athlete to win a medal at these Games. “I think so, we’ll see!” she said, laughing.
Her time of 1 min 55.88 sec improved Holmes’s record that had stood since 1995 – seven years before Hodgkinson was born. With fellow 19-year-old Athing Mu, of the United States, claiming gold, a new era has arrived for women’s 800m running.
“I am speechless right now,” Hodgkinson said. “Kelly is a massive legend of the sport. She seems so lovely and has been sending me messages the last few days being very supportive. Just words of wisdom and belief, that sort of thing.
“The whole thing is cloud nine, and there wasn’t one 19-year-old in the race, there were two. It is unbelievable. Hopefully we’ve got long careers ahead of us and probably more battles to come, which is great. Some people will say you’re too young. Well, age is just a number.”
For some time it looked as if Britain might have two women on the podium. With the imperious Mu evoking memories of David Rudisha by dictating from gun to tape to win in an American record time of 1-55.21, there was a fierce scrap for the minor medals behind her.
Rounding the bend for the home straight, it was Hodgkinson and British team-mate Jemma Reekie who emerged as the most likely contenders, pulling clear of the chasing pack. But as Hodgkinson held her speed, Reekie faded with each step and was narrowly run out third place, having to make do with a personal best of 1-56.90 for fourth as America’s Raevyn Rogers claimed bronze.
There was also a big personal best for Britain’s Alex Bell, who was only called up to the team as a late replacement when Laura Muir decided not to contest the event, and ran 1-57.66 for seventh.
Given Hodgkinson’s imperious performance, it is easy to forget how new this all is to the athlete, whose shoes – the latest super-spikes, of course – were covered in good luck messages from friends and family.
Had the Olympics taken place last summer, as originally scheduled, she would have stood little chance of making the British team. Prior to this year she could count the number of foreign events she had competed at on one hand.
She has also spent the past year juggling her athletics with the start of a criminology and psychology degree at Leeds Beckett University, although she admits: “I don’t really enjoy education.”
She speaks with the cheerful naivety of someone who has little concept of what she has accomplished at such a young age; someone for whom this is wonderfully unfamiliar.
One of her heroes growing up was Tom Daley, now a British teammate at these Olympics. When she is not in halls at university she lives at home with her family, and was hilariously outed by one of her fellow athletes as having tried to warm some milk by sticking it in the kettle the day before she competed here.
Her coach, Trevor Painter, and his wife, world 800m bronze medallist Jenny Meadows, have become accustomed to discussing race plans with her while she fine-tunes her make-up. She plans on having “one guilt-free night out” in a club near her home in Leigh to celebrate when she flies back.
In so many senses, she is just a normal 19-year-old. And yet she really is not. So is she prepared for her life to change for ever?
“I’m ready,” she said. “That’s what
I’ve dreamed of. I want to be one of the best in the world. I’m going to do everything I can to be that.”
With fellow student Mu, whose parents emigrated from Sudan to the US before she was born, things will never be the same either.
Only double Olympic champion Caster Semenya has run quicker than her winning time for the past decade. Semenya and her fellow medallists from Rio are all unable to compete over 800m due to controversial testosterone regulations, and Mu says the next target is a world record that has stood since 1983. “I definitely think it is possible, especially with athletes competing like Keely,” Mu said. “She is amazing and only 19. I’m sure in the next couple of years we are going to push each other. That record is going to go down, just because we are good athletes.” It seems Hodgkinson is destined never to win that European junior title.