Keely Hodgkinson
Keely Nicole Hodgkinson is an English middle-distance runner. She is the reigning Olympic champion at 800 m after winning the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics. In total, she has won two Olympic medals having also won silver at the same distance in the delayed 2020 Games. She is also a two-time European champion in the 800 m and has won two silver medals and a bronze in the same event at World Championship level. She is both the British record holder and the sixth fastest woman ever over 800 m.
At the age of 19, she won the silver medal at the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics, while simultaneously breaking the British record set by Kelly Holmes in 1995. Hodgkinson proceeded to win silver medals at several championships; the 2022 and 2023 World Championships, as well as the 2022 Commonwealth Games. At European level, Hodgkinson went one step higher, becoming a two-time European champion in 2022 and 2024 and a two-time European indoor champion from 2021 and 2023. She also holds the world indoor best for the 600 metres and was the 2021 Diamond League finals 800 m champion.
At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Hodgkinson won the gold medal in the Women's 800 m. In the final, she led the race from early on, and then broke away in the last 100 metres to cross the line ahead of Tsige Duguma and reigning world champion Mary Moraa. Hodgkinson is also a four-time British national senior champion. She was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2024, and was awarded an MBE for contribution to athletics in the 2025 New Year Honours list.
Early life and background
Hodgkinson was born on 3 March 2002 in Atherton, Greater Manchester, and was brought up there. Her mother is also a runner. Hodgkinson attended Fred Longworth High School in Tyldesley, where she was friends with fellow pupil and future England footballer Ella Toone. Hodgkinson also attended Loughborough College in Leicestershire. In 2021, she began a criminology degree course at Leeds Beckett University, but later dropped out to focus on her athletics career.Early and youth career
Hodgkinson joined Leigh Harriers at the age of nine and won county championships in 800 m, 1200 m, 1500 m, and cross-country races. She initially swam with Howe Bridge Aces Swimming Club before devoting herself fully to running.In 2012, aged ten, she competed among seventy finalists at the British Schools Modern Biathlon Championships in London. Hodgkinson finished second in the 500 m run and after the 50 m swim she ended in eighth place overall. Her father encouraged her to focus on athletics rather than swimming, and she was also inspired by British heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
In 2013, she became the first Leigh Harrier to claim the individual U11 girls' title in both the South East Lancashire League and the Red Rose League. She ran her 16th consecutive undefeated race two weeks later, winning on a 2 km course in the Mid-Lancashire Cross Country League at U11 level. On the track, at U13 level, she became Cheshire and Manchester champion in both the 800 and 1200 metres. In 2014, Hodgkinson won all 13 of her track races as well as several cross country competitions. In the U13 category, she took her third Greater Manchester title on a 2.75 km cross country course.
In 2015, she had to limit training and starts due to a Mastoidectomy to remove a tumour on her ear, which left her 95% deaf in that ear, followed by knee issues. The following year she finished third in the U15 800 m events at both the ESAA English Schools' Championships and England Athletics Championships. In 2017, she raced the 800 m in the U17 age category. She went on to take her first gold medal at the England Championships, setting a new lifetime best, before adding the 1500 m School Games title.
2018–2019
In June 2018, aged 16, Hodgkinson became the England U20 800 m champion. The following month, she won the gold medal at the European Athletics U18 Championships held in Győr, Hungary, breaking the championship record in the process with a time of 2:04.84. In August, she won the England U17 title before setting a competition record time of 2:04.89 on way to victory at the School Games. She was named at the Believe Sports Awards in Wigan, as Sports Achiever of the Year.In June 2019, Hodgkinson competed at the England U20 Championships, placing second, and she earned bronze at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden. That year, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows began coaching her.
Senior career
2020
On 1 February, aged 17, Hodgkinson set the second-fastest female U20 performance ever in the indoor 800 m at the Vienna Indoor Classic. She set a European U20 record of 2:01.16 to triumph on her international debut at senior level, just 0.13 s off the world U20 record. She broke Kirsty Wade's long-standing British U20 record of 2:02.88 set in 1981, and Aníta Hinriksdóttir's European record for the age group set in 2015 by 0.4 seconds. Later that month, she went on to take the national senior 800 m title at the British Indoor Championships. At the end of August, she competed at the Göteborg GP in Sweden, recording a new personal best of 2:01.78 as she finished behind Raevyn Rogers. The 2020 season was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the 2020 Summer Olympics postponed until the following year. In September, Hodgkinson claimed the British outdoor title to become the youngest winner in the competition over 800 m since 1974. She improved her personal best again with a time 2:01.73, when ending her season with a fifth-place finish in Rovereto, Italy three days later.2021: Tokyo Olympic silver medallist
2021 proved to be a breakthrough year for Hodgkinson, and it began in Vienna with her becoming the first British woman to set a world U20 record since Zola Budd 36 years previously. Having arrived in Vienna after Covid-induced travel complications, she won the 800 m for the second consecutive year with a time of 1:59.03. This marked the first time that she had completed the event in under two minutes, and also broke the world indoor U20 record. She shaved two seconds off the previous best set by Ethiopia's Meskerem Legesse in 2004. Her record did not last for long, as Hodgkinson's contemporary, Athing Mu, improved the new record the following month to 1:58.40.Hodgkinson competed at the 2021 European Indoor Championships, four days after her 19th birthday. She became the second youngest British winner in the competition's history, and also the youngest ever women's 800 m European indoor champion after her success in Toruń, Poland.
In May, Hodgkinson secured victory at the Golden Spike in Ostrava, Czechia, recording a sub-two minute mark outdoors for the first time after clocking 1:58.89. She broke by almost a second the UK junior record which had been held by Charlotte Moore. Her time was also the European junior record, beating Birte Bruhns' mark of 1:59.17 set in 1988. At the end of June, she sealed a place in the British team for the Tokyo Olympics by defending her title at the 2021 British Athletics Championships. The competition also doubled as the Olympic trials, and she overcame Laura Muir and Jemma Reekie to seal victory. A week later, she set a British U23 record by lowering her personal best to 1:57.51 when finishing fourth at the Stockholm Diamond League meet.
At the 2021 Summer Olympics, Hodgkinson won the silver medal, taking almost two seconds off her personal best with a time of 1:55.88. She was beaten by Mu. Hodgkinson also broke Kelly Holmes' 26-year-old British record of 1:56.21 in the race. She also set continental U20 and U23 records. After the race, Hodgkinson acknowledged that the Olympics' postponement had benefitted her, explaining, "If the Olympics had been last year I wouldn't have been here, but suddenly it's given me a year to grow and compete with these girls."
File:Women's 800m at Brussels DL 2021.jpg|thumb|Hodgkinson won her first Diamond Trophy in 2021. Pictured at the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels.
On the Diamond League circuit, Hodgkinson came second in Brussels, and ended the season with victory at the Zürich final in September, winning the Diamond League 800 m title and $30,000 in prize money.
Hodgkinson's early athletics career had been funded by her parents, and in 2020, she was not named by British Athletics as a recipient of £15,000 of lottery funding. Businessman, Barrie Wells, who had previously helped fund 18 athletes to the 2012 London Olympics, stepped in and roughly matched the £15,000 a year that she had missed out on. This allowed Hodgkinson to attend warm-weather training in Florida. In October 2021, British Athletics announced that Hodgkinson would receive lottery funding.
2022: World silver medallist
At the beginning of the season, Hodgkinson revealed that she was targeting medals at the World Indoor Championships in March as well as three major outdoor championships in the summer: the World Championships, Commonwealth Games and the European Championships. Stating her aims, Hodgkinson said "I'd love four major medals. It's definitely physically possible to do all four. Mentally, we'll see. The world outdoors is No 1 and I really want to do the Commonwealths, as it is a home Games. With the Europeans we'll see how the body and mind are coping."Hodgkinson opened her athletics year on 19 February with the fastest indoor 800 m performance by a woman in 20 years with 1:57.20, at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix. It was the quickest mark since the precise day she was born, when the indoor world record was set by Jolanda Čeplak. Her time set a new British indoor record, the fastest ever mark by a teenager, and the sixth-fastest indoor mark of all time. In March, Hodgkinson headed to the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. She suffered a quad injury during her warm-up for the event and was forced to withdraw.
File:Mu and Hodgkinson at 2022 World Athletics Championships.jpg|thumb|Only 0.08 s separated the winner and the runner-up at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in the US.
On 21 May, Hodgkinson competed at the Diamond League event in Birmingham, claiming victory in the 800 m. She then had further success in the Diamond League, claiming victories in Eugene, Oslo, as well as finishing runner-up behind Mary Moraa in Stockholm.
In the 800 m at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Hodgkinson claimed silver after finishing 0.08 s behind Mu. Hodgkinson recorded a season's best time of 1:56.38, and afterwards, she reflected, "I'm definitely a little bit annoyed but being on another world podium in my second year of being in the professional world of athletics is something I should be proud of." Less than two weeks later, at the Commonwealth Games, she claimed another silver medal, this time finishing behind Moraa. Later in August, she secured her first major senior outdoor gold, winning the 800 m at the European Championships held in Munich in a time of 1:59.04. She finished half a second clear of Rénelle Lamote and remarked afterwards "I'm just happy to finally be on top of the podium."
In September, she finished in fifth place at the Zürich Diamond League final. Hodgkinson's time at the Birmingham indoor event earlier in the year, made her the world leader for the season with a nearly 1.3-second advantage, while her result from the World Championships final ranked as the second quickest time for the year outdoors.