Keely awaits her golden moment
She visualised being in this race aged nine, so...
THE hopes of an entire nation is a desperately difficult thing for even the most seasoned athlete to carry upon their shoulders.
Yet with all of that expectation around her, 21-year-old Keely Hodgkinson appears to be the same care-free spirit she always has been.
Hodgkinson was widely tipped as Britain’s best shot at a gold medal ahead of these World Championships in Budapest, which end this evening. Katarina JohnsonThompson and Josh Kerr’s victories have helped to ease that burden.
The attention, though, is nothing that Hodgkinson hasn’t brought upon herself. She has made loud and clear her desire to become the finest athlete these shores have ever produced. A gold medal in tonight’s women’s 800metres final would not be a bad start.
These are the nights that the little girl from Wigan used to dream about. No doubt there would have been days running on the track at
Leigh Harriers and Athletic Club, the place it all began for Hodgkinson aged nine, when she visualised herself racing in a World Championship final.
With a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics and second place at last summer’s World Championships in Eugene, Hodgkinson has already achieved a lot.
But that isn’t enough for her. The only place on the podium that will validate all of her hard work.
‘She loves to race and she was competitive in everything,’ says Margaret Galvin. Margaret, alongside her late husband Joe, were Hodgkinson’s first coaches at Leigh. The Galvins spotted a young Hodgkinson while she competed in a primary school cross-country race organised by the club, which receives backing from the National Lottery. The long, wet grass and thick mud were never Hodgkinson’s cup of tea. Nor were the early morning runs every Sunday. And yet she kept coming back, week after week, month after month.
‘It was a bit too early in the morning for her, but she would still come and do it and that’s testament to her commitment and character,’ said Galvin. ‘If you’re doing something you don’t particularly like doing but you know you’re going to benefit from doing it in the end, that is building character and resilience. She was phenomenal when she was training. She used to train with the men and maybe one or two could keep up with her. Most couldn’t.’
It is those foundations in crosscountry which has helped to build the strength and resilience that has served Hodgkinson well not just in races but across her entire career. Very rarely does she skip a meet.
‘There was one particular incident in a cross-country where her heel got clipped and she ran with just one shoe, but she ran the whole course. She didn’t say, “I’ve lost my shoe, I can’t do it”. She finished the race with this big, long sock flapping around in front of her. It was very funny to watch. She was laughing when she finished.’
Hodgkinson will hope she has a smile on her face shortly after the final at 7.45pm tonight — but there are plenty in the field who are intent on making history too.
In Athing Mu, of the United States, and Kenya’s Mary Moraa she is up against two women who have got the better of her in major finals before. Mu, also 21, took gold at the Tokyo Olympics before narrowly pipping the Brit to the world title last summer in Oregon.
And it was Moraa who spoiled home favourite Hodgkinson’s night at the Commonwealth Games later that summer, taking gold ahead of her.
Also in the field is Hodgkinson’s team-mate, Jemma Reekie, Laura Muir’s training partner, who showed in the semis she is in strong form.
But Hodgkinson is already known for her ability to shut out all the external noise, as she focuses on the one thing that has mattered to her since she was nine years old.
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