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Geraint Hughes is granted unique entry with Olympic 800m Gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson at her coaching base within the Pyrenees
Geraint Hughes is granted unique entry with Olympic 800m Gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson at her coaching base within the Pyrenees
In the event you turn out to be an Olympic champion, you may both sit again and bask within the glory of that one second or you may lay plans to turn out to be a legend of your sport. It is the latter that 800m Olympic gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson has determined to do.
The work to try this begins within the skinny, rarefied air of the Pyrenees mountains. At round 6,000 toes in a small French mountain village known as Font-Romeu, Hodgkinson started working with different members of her teaching group together with coaches Trevor Painter and his spouse Jenny Meadows, herself an 800m runner of nice reputation, profitable world championship bronze in 2009.
Coaching at altitude, the place the air is thinner and there’s much less oxygen, creates the proper setting for an elite athlete like Hodgkinson to start her arduous winter regime to organize for subsequent season.
As Painter explains, coaching at altitude permits the physique to supply extra pink blood cells naturally to compensate for the dearth of oxygen, so when an athlete returns to a decrease altitude their base health is bigger.
It is a good begin for any athlete and a well-trodden path for many elite Olympic athletes.
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Miriam Walker-Khan studies from Paris after Hodgkinson stormed to a shocking ladies’s 800m gold
For Hodgkinson, she plans to pack her 2025 season with ambitions that complement these of an Olympic champion.
Rewinding to that wonderful night time in Paris in August, I requested Hodgkinson whether or not she knew she was going to win the gold medal earlier than the race even started. “Mmmm, yeah,” she replied, laughing and smiling with out coming throughout as conceited.
She simply knew she may and possibly would win the race. At 22 years of age, she was in the most effective bodily situation of her younger profession, having set a brand new British 800m file only a matter of weeks earlier than the Olympic remaining.
Hodgkinson believed in future and that it was her night time, and so it proved to be as she produced some of the dominant shows on the monitor in Paris.
So again to what Hodgkinson is doing within the Pyrenees. It is as a result of she and her coaches consider the Brit can turn out to be one of many true greats of monitor and discipline.
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Olympic 800m champion Hodgkinson displays on her victory in Paris and says she at all times backed herself to win gold going into the ultimate
At 19, Hodgkinson burst onto the worldwide scene by profitable the 800m silver medal on the Tokyo Olympics. Just about no one exterior the English athletics scene had heard of her at that second, however those that had knew she was already one thing particular.
Two World Championship silver medals adopted earlier than that golden night firstly of August, and gold modifications all the things.
“It’s amazing, crazy, the difference between silver and gold,” Hodgkinson says, explaining being recognised extra often and the rising alternatives to do issues away from athletics.
A few of these have are available in style, an trade she is obsessed with, whereas she additionally acquired VIP therapy from Manchester United as she was honoured on the pitch at Outdated Trafford in entrance of 75,000 followers.
Hodgkinson, from Atherton simply exterior Manchester, is a lifelong fan of the membership. Her household, additionally United supporters, proudly watched as she confirmed off her gold medal to the group and acquired a framed shirt along with her Olympic 800m profitable time printed on it – together with the very becoming quantity ‘1’.
Hodgkinson was honoured throughout a Manchester United recreation at Outdated Trafford
Meadows is aware of a factor or two in regards to the 800m and predicts that Hodgkinson can dominate the game.
“It can’t be silver and bronze anymore. She can dominate the sport and become a legend.”
And that begins with the 2025 season, the place Hodgkinson alongside along with her coaches will rigorously select her race schedule for what seems to be set to be a really busy yr.
The European Indoor Championships within the Netherlands and World Indoor Championships in China are each in March, earlier than the spotlight of the out of doors season comes on the World Championships in Japan in September.
There are different ambitions too, within the type of data. However whereas there’s certainty over the goal in competitors, the method to the stopwatch is “when it happens it happens”.
Painter and Meadows have such perception in Hodkinson’s expertise that they assume she’s going to be capable to break the 800m indoor and out of doors world data.
The indoor file is maybe the better of the 2 to interrupt. The 800m out of doors world file was set in July 1983 and is the oldest world file left on the books in monitor and discipline, with the time of 1:53.28 considered for years as untouchable.
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Hodgkinson displays on her gold medal-winning efficiency within the 800m and units the world file as her subsequent goal
Hodgkinson although is clearly getting faster and faster and is doubtlessly nonetheless years from reaching her potential. Her private finest, the sixth quickest 800m of all time, is simply over a second off Jarmila Kratochvilova’s world file, however already there’s a sense that Hodgkinson could be very able to working sub 1:54s.
Hodgkinson just isn’t solely the world’s finest 800m runner, however very helpful over 400m too, so pace is an attribute in hand.
Regardless of Hodgkinson’s success, the 22-year-old stays all the way down to earth, approachable and enjoyable. Family and friends are her rock, whereas Painter and Meadows are like a second household. Their daughter Arabella is aware of Hodgkinson solely as “Auntie Keely”.
These two not solely hold Hodgkinson grounded, however organise her schedule, permitting her house and time away from athletics and a working schedule which focuses her on nothing aside from the coaching regime at hand.
They joke, smile, and chortle, however proceed to work arduous as a unit.
Whereas sat on a rock recovering after a 35-minute ‘warm-up’ run at 6,000 toes not removed from Font-Romeu, Hodgkinson says: “I asked for Sundays off from Trev. He said become Olympic champion and you can.”
I requested if he had caught to his phrase, to which she enthusiastically confirmed, whereas gulping for extra air to get well.
A chuckling Painter watching on from a couple of yards away, with depraved timing and humour, says: “She has a hard strength and conditioning session now in the gym… and at altitude, you’ll enjoy this!”
With this environment, there seems to be little doubt that 2025 shall be one other yr the place Hodgkinson additional enhances her place as certainly one of Britain’s present sporting greats.
