Keely Hodgkinson interview: Why this summer is about the 800m world record and defending her European crown

Keely Hodgkinson is chasing greatness. Already at 24 she has run her way into the middle-distance pantheon: Olympic gold. Tick. World Indoor gold. Tick. The 800m short track world record. Tick. European gold. She’s got four of them.

But champions tend to have a brazen level of ambition. The Briton, who sits sixth on the women’s 800m all-time list, is laser-focused on taking down the longest-standing world record of the Olympic track disciplines: Jarmila Kratochvílova’s 1:53.28s two-lap run from 1983.

“We’ve obviously got a plan A of what we’d like to happen,” she says over video call to various UK media, including The Athletic.

“If I come into shape and want to go at it sooner, or it happens to be a bit later in the season, that could just be how it goes,” she adds. “I’m very happy with where I’m at, building on the indoor season. I’ve been healthy for a year now. I’ve not missed a training session.”

Plan A has worked thus far. She suffered injuries early in the calendar year in the past two seasons. That caused disruption, including a hamstring problem that forced postponement of her planned 800m indoor world record attempt last February.

One year on and fully fit, she cracked it, having opened up with a 1:56.33s run for the British indoor title — the fifth-fastest time ever indoors — before heading to Lievin, northern France, five days later. There she smashed a record as old as her. Hodgkinson was born on March 3 2002, the same day that Jolanda Ceplak ran 1:55.82s in Austria, finishing three-hundredths ahead of home favourite Stephanie Graf.

Hodgkinson flew out over the opening 200m in Lievin, gapping a field that featured bona-fide athletes in Tsige Duguma and Audrey Werro en route to clocking 1:54.87s — a run that was almost a full second quicker than Ceplak.

“I’m very grateful to be able to do the things that I’ve been wanting to do for the last two years in training,” she says. Winning a world title was another “thing”. She took bronze at last September’s World Championships in Tokyo — placing behind training partner Georgia Hunter-Bell — in what was only her fifth race of an injury-hit season. She’d made her third podium in as many World Championship appearances but wanted the crown to complete the set.

That came this March at World Indoors in Torun, Poland. She blitzed the field again. “There’s other people in the race, I want to respect them and also make sure that I win too,” she says amid all the world record talk. But Hodgkinson made the race into a time trial in Torun, splitting 56.96s at halfway and striding clear of Werro once more. She won in a championship record time (1:55.31s).

It proved worth the wait. That night Hunter-Bell won the 1,500m final and fellow Brit Molly Caudery jumped 4.85m to prevail in the pole vault. Great Britain had a Super Sunday with three gold medals in less than half an hour.

Then Hodgkinson came back out to partake in the women’s 4x400m final, and dropped the quickest split in the field (50.10s). Getting better over one lap outdoors is part of the plan to make 2026 like 2024, a season in which Hodgkinson went unbeaten, winning Olympic and European gold and running a British record (1:54.61s) at the London Diamond League.

“It’s the main thing I’m looking forward to this year,” she says of racing again in the capital this July. Josh Kerr, GB’s leading middle-distance man, is targeting a takedown of the mile world record there — Hicham El Guerrouj’s 3:43.13s has stood since 1999.

A mischievous smile appears on Hodgkinson’s face. “It might be a battle of the world records. Who can get a better one?” She clarifies that she’s joking, but those words might end up to be prophetic.

Before then there’s more work to be done. Her outdoor season will open in Rome next week over 400m, a distance she has not raced outside of the UK for two years. “The lineup is crazy, I’m really throwing myself in the deep end there. But I think it’s good to put myself in a position where, on paper, I’m going in slowest and up against girls who (are) world finalists and medalists.”

Bettering her personal best of 51.49s, run indoors this March, seems an inevitability. “We’ve been able to put together a speed block that we hope is going to come together with my 800 in a few weeks. It’s all a process,” she explains, referencing the preparations with coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows (an 800m World Championship medallist in 2009) at M11 Track Club in Manchester, her home city.

“I’ve always considered myself a 400/800 type athlete,” Hodgkinson says.”I don’t think I’ve shown all my potential in the 400 and I got a bit of a glimpse of what I could do indoors. I’m still very much learning the event.

“Hopefully bringing down that 400 time, it’s going to make that 800 feel nice. Over the years people have been like, ‘Keely’s got no speed’. I’m like: Yes, I do!”

She speaks as honestly as she runs. “Give me that f***ing baton and I’ll give you a 50-point (split)” she told reporters in the mixed zone at World Indoors. When it was announced that a bid for the 2029 World Championships in London could be derailed by West Ham refusing to give up the Olympic Stadium for two weeks, Hodgkinson stated that GB “will bring back more medals than West Ham have seen in their entire history”.

As with Kerr, it’s easy to misperceive her self-belief and ambition as arrogance. “I am actually really passionate about it. We will fill that stadium every single day,” she says defiantly. “That would be amazing, inspiring the next generation and putting athletics out there.”

Deep down there’s a soft side to her. She cried tears of relief after claiming Olympic gold two summers ago, becoming the first Brit to win that event since Kelly Holmes in 2004. Last year she spoke candidly about the emotional toll of her injuries and, before that, how she dealt with post-Olympic blues after winning silver as a teenager at the 2021 Tokyo Games. What hasn’t killed her made her stronger, with plenty of cycling and weights in the gym to improve her robustness.

It’s just that she loves to win, and Hodgkinson has ample opportunity to do that this summer. Halfway through the 2028 Olympic cycle, the European Championships come to England (Birmingham specifically) for the first time. She’s opting against racing at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, and is qualified via her Olympic win for the inaugural World Ultimate Championships in Budapest, Hungary, this September.

“I split the season up into two halves in my mind: through the Diamond League season, get to London, then the second half comes with all the Championships.” Records first, then medals. It’s to her credit that Hodgkinson runs major championships as successfully as circuit races, avoiding any banana skins in the qualifying rounds and producing gun-to-tape performances in the final to take medals on her own terms.

“It’s cool to be able to defend a title,” she says of her European crown. She’s targeting three more to tie Laura Muir, who holds the most ever (seven over 1,500m and 3,000m distances). Another goal is to break 50 seconds for 400m and run a sub-four-minute 1,500m. The only other woman to manage that, plus run a sub-two 800m, is Caster Semenya.

“I’m looking forward to challenging myself. My body is coping,” Hodgkinson says, her words laden with gratitude, remembering how quickly the glory of 2024 became turmoil a year later.

But she allows herself to dream. “I would love to have that world record on home soil.”