The afterglow of Olympic success can last for a while but when it is gone, getting back to hard work, away from the spotlight, can be tough. And for Keely Hodgkinson, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2024 and poster athlete of the Paris Games, it was especially tough.
But it was not her post-euphoria mentality that troubled Hodgkinson - it was her physicality, two torn hamstrings ruining most of her plans for 2025. She managed to make it to the start line of the World Championships in Tokyo, finishing a creditable third behind Lilian Odira and Georgia Hunter Bell, but the year was definitely not what she had in mind.
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At times, Hodgkinson must surely have wondered if that glorious summer’s night in the Stade de France in the Parisian suburb of Saint Denis was as good as it would get. But behind the superstar demeanour, there is clearly a determination and drive that will lead to even more remarkable achievements.
One arrived in quite spectacular fashion on Thursday evening. It also took place in France. In Lievin, a town close to the city of Lens in the north.
On March 3, 2002, Hodgkinson was born. On March 3, 2002, Slovenia’s Jolanda Ceplak ran a time of 1:55.82 at the European Indoor Championships in Vienna, setting a world record for the 800m that stood until Hodgkinson took to the track in Lievin and ran 1:54.87.
“That was really fun,” smiled Hodgkinson. It was fun - and it was fantastic.
Make no mistake, to take almost a second off a world record that has stood for 24 years is astonishing. And remember, Ceplak - along with the runner-up in Vienna in 2002, Stephanie Graf - would later serve a two-year doping ban.
The World Indoor Championships in Poland in four weeks time are next on the agenda but after the record-breaking run in France, the prospect of another landmark moment must be in Hodgkinson’s thoughts. During the time spent in the gym recovering from those hamstring issues, her development in strength and power led to members of her M11 training group referring to her as Keely 2.0.
And Keely 2.0 will now surely target athletics’ longest-standing world record, Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 800m outdoor mark of 1:53.28 set in Munich in July, 1983. Hodginkson is sixth on the all-time list and her best of 1:54.61 is some way off that Kratochvilova time but the 23-year-old said her uninterrupted winter training block was the ‘healthiest’ she has had in a long time.
Her record-shattering indoor run proves that emphatically. And 18 months after the high of the Olympics, Hodgkinson also believes she has got her work-relaxation ‘balance’ just right.
Before the run in Livien, Hodgkinson had teamed up with Kim Kardashian at Paris Fashion Week, saying: “I’m really big on balance. Balance is definitely my thing. My internal happiness comes before anything else.
“So when my coach said I could take a trip to Paris to meet Kim Kardashian, I wasn’t going to turn that down. And we had a great time. It was a lot of fun.”
And watching Hodgkinson break more records and win more medals is going to be a lot of fun over these next few years. That is for sure.
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