Keely discovers gold at the end of the rainbow
WITH a rainbow reaching over Munich, Keely Hodgkinson finally found a piece of gold on Saturday night.
While there was never any doubt that it would eventually come, her relief was demonstrated in a joyful little dance across the track after she landed her first major outdoor 800m title at the European Championships.
With it, a streak of silver medals and nearmisses that has run through the Olympics, worlds and Commonwealth Games in the past year was nudged to the shade.
It is important to remember at this point she is only 20, and that second best on the planet is hardly shabby in any pursuit.
But such is her talent and ambition she had recently declared herself ‘fuming’ at her recurring spot on the podium.
By blitzing a decent field in Germany with a decisive kick from 200m out, she has scratched the itch.
‘As you can tell, I was very happy to be on the top of the podium,’ she said, having overcome the exhaustion of a brutal sequence of three championships — and three medals — in the space of a month.
‘I have a great team around me — my family and friends know it has been a hard year mentally.
‘I’m definitely really happy to have finished the season with this special gold medal. This one means a lot.
‘There has been a lot of changes for myself as I’ve adapted to professional athlete life, but I am living out my childhood dreams so I really cannot complain.
‘Coming off the Olympic Games last summer, many people go through an Olympic drought after such a high, but I never experienced that.
‘For me it was about keeping turning up for training and applying myself in races. Overall I’m really happy with this season and I am doing my dream job.
‘There is still a world indoor medal I don’t have and I have a lot of silvers, so there is a long way to go and a lot of hard work.’
Despite being a heavy favourite, the 800m can be unpredictable and is rarely a place to wager a mortgage.
That was illustrated by each of the eight women in this final carrying season’s best times of sub-two minutes, albeit none had been within two seconds of the 1:56.38 Hodgkinson ran in taking silver at the worlds last month.
More crucially, the borders of the competition meant no place for the Brit’s serial nemesis Athing Mu, of America, nor
Kenya’s Mary Moraa, whose unconventional run beat her to second at the recent Commonwealth Games. In their absence, Hodgkinson was by far the class act of the bunch and accordingly kept herself comfortable in the middle of the pack for well over half the race.
She waited until there was half a lap remaining before introducing the leaders to her kick.
That immediately saw her pass Germany’s Christina Hering and the two-time European
silver medallist Renelle Lamote to go to the front.
Jemma Reekie, the Scottish talent who is still working her way back to her best after a number of ailments this year including glandular fever, tried to go with Hodgkinson, though it was telling that she was busting a gut while her team-mate appeared to be ticking off a Park Run.
In pouring rain, the gold was secured in 1:59:04, with Lamote completing a hat-trick of silvers ahead of Poland’s Anna Wielgosz.
Exhausted, Reekie faded from second to
fifth on the straight, while Alexandra Bell was sixth.
Later, the highly-fancied men’s 4x400m team of Matthew Hudson-Smith, Charlie Dobson, Lewis Davey and Alex HaydockWilson held on for a thrilling relay gold from Belgium.
Hudson-Smith, the individual champion, had got the team off to a fine start and the advantage was healthy through two legs before Davey allowed the French to close the gap to a single metre.
With Haydock-Wilson, a bronze medallist behind Hudson-Smith earlier in the week, taking the baton, he faced a constant challenge from the French and the fastfinishing Belgians, but endured to cross first in 2:59.35.
The women’s quartet of Victoria Ohuruogu, Ama Pipi, Jodie Williams and Nicole Yeargin took bronze behind the Netherlands and Poland.