Keely Hodgkinson: Nice Britain’s Olympic 800m gold medallist eyes ‘world domination’ in pursuit of 43-year-old world file

Mendacity horizontal in absolute agony, puffing closely attempting to get as a lot oxygen again into her lungs, Keely Hodgkinson is hurting.

She’s simply accomplished a set of 400m coaching runs on the outside observe on the Manchester Regional Area proper subsequent door to Manchester Metropolis’s stadium. There’s nonetheless some mild blue ticker tape catching on the breeze left over from Metropolis’s ship off to Pep Guardiola.

Hodgkinson does not discover or care. Full on, flat out, pushing her physique past limits mere mortals may tolerate.

However… the ache was price it.

Keely Hodgkinson pictured in the course of the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Torun earlier this yr

Her coaches – husband and spouse group Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter – have spent about 30 seconds checking their stopwatches and so they’ve simply checked out each other. Shock, astonishment, satisfaction and big smiles at what has simply occurred at considered one of Hodgkinson’s ultimate coaching periods earlier than her outside season begins tonight (June 4) in Rome… she’s simply smashed her private greatest (PB) time in coaching for 400m break up occasions.

This is likely one of the main milestones Hodgkinson and her coaches needed to see in a coaching run in her assault to beat the oldest world file in athletics, the ladies’s 800m, which was set in 1983 by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova – it stands at an intimidating 1:53:28.

To beat a 43-year-old file Hodgkinson must have the tempo over the primary 400m to realistically problem that point, that is why these ultimate coaching periods in Manchester with the M11 teaching group run by Painter and Meadows are so essential. Hodgkinson has what’s considered an attractive working fashion and on prime of that she comes with grit, willpower and sheer will to win, however even that’s not all the time sufficient.

To interrupt the world file and, in her phrases, obtain “world domination” she must be quick over the primary 400m of the 800m, nevertheless it has be managed.

You’ll be able to’t simply dash it and go all out, management is vital so it should include pure pace that has been labored on time and time once more in the course of the arduous winter months of coaching, in addition to proper now as she finalises her preparations for the outside season.

As Hodgkinson lies on the ground nonetheless gasping for air, Meadows and Painter stroll excitedly over; Hodgkinson’s PB for 400m in coaching – in what are generally known as 400m break up occasions – has beforehand averaged 50.5 seconds. Meadows cannot include herself, Painter has an enormous grin as he holds out his stopwatch and notepad: Hodgkinson’s simply run her 400m coaching runs at a mean of 49.1 seconds!

Recreation on. Her 800m world file try is on, no extra speaking about it. Hodgkinson and her coaches have the proof they now want. 1:53:28 is beatable.

Keely Hodgkinson is a six-time world medallist

I ask Meadows what has simply occurred. I’ve witnessed Hodgkinson run two very quick 400m break up laps (400m laps run as 250m, quick relaxation after which 150m, which is then repeated and repeated to calculate a mean time), however I’ve no concept what is going on on. Meadows explains: “There’s not many times Keely can ever surprise us. Two split fours (400m laps) and she’s come out with an average of 49.1 (seconds).

“All alongside we have been attempting to get to have the ability to run 50-something for a 400, then she could be significantly capable of assault this world file.”

Painter chips in: “This can be a large day. It is one other issue the place we truly go ‘we have got proof this may occur’. It is not us deluding ourselves. We’re realists with knowledge analytics, you need to be particularly once you’re chasing a file like this.

“She responds really well to stimulus, so we’ve been able to work for a month and a half before on this (speed work). It was an ideal window, let’s get you as fast as we can and see what happens.”

By now, Hodgkinson can breathe correctly and has stood up. I ask her if she’s stunned by what she’s simply run?

“I’m not very surprised because it’s been in the back of my head for the past two weeks,” she says. “I’ve been able to do the speed work that I’ve not been able to do for a while, which has put us in a great position… but it’s just nice to know that for my 800 that that’s there, whether it comes out or not. So yeah, we’re just in an exciting place, exciting times!

“For me, all this previous yr or two I’ve simply realized to essentially benefit from the course of, so after I got here again into winter (coaching) I used to be joyful to begin match and simply watch myself get match once more and push the bounds of what we have performed.

“I’ve enjoyed seeing myself get faster and faster. A few little mental battles on the way with the speed, because of my injuries last year, but that’s part of it. For me, being an athlete and where I am now, it’s all about the process and how it comes together. That’s the real enjoyment. Big tick today. Very huge!”

Meadows’ broad smile reveals no signal of disappearing, she is aware of the importance of Hodgkinson’s coaching runs. “Yeah, massive! It makes everything seem worthwhile,” she says.

“You get bad days sometimes where it’s not going well, you get attitudes from athletes, we’ve got conversations that we’ve got to pick up when we get home, physios need to be called, scans need to be booked, chaos… and then you get days like this.”

‘Days like this’ do not come round fairly often and after they do it is the results of months and months of arduous work that nobody actually ever sees. At occasions monotonous, painful, boring and lonely.

“That dedication made Keely Hodgkinson the 800m Olympic champion at Paris 2024, it’s made her the hottest property in athletics and has made her the World Indoor champion and Indoor 800m world record holder in 2026.

Hodgkinson set a brand new championship file on the World Athletics Indoor Championships earlier this yr

“Now she has the arduous proof in knowledge from coaching. She does not simply hope to interrupt the 800m girls’s world file, she is aware of she will be able to.”

Hodgkinson adds: “For me, I get all my confidence from coaching and from Trevor and Jenny, and from the proof that we run on the observe. Days like that is what make all of it price it – the complications, the early mornings, the lengthy days, the busy appointments, all this and that I actually do put my life in the direction of it. It simply makes it price it.

“Now my job is to go out and execute that in a race and make it real. I’ll take it as a really good challenge, it brings out the best in me. Hopefully, it’s a very exciting summer ahead. I feel like it’s going to be so.”

So when will a problem to the oldest world file in athletics come? Clearly it has been on the playing cards and within the minds of Hodgkinson and her coaches, however as they are saying, they go by the proof.

Painter and Meadows imagine if the whole lot is in the fitting place then subsequent month on the London Diamond League assembly may very well be the proper setting for Hodgkinson.

“Well we know when she’d like to do it,” Meadows says. “She would love to do it this year in London at the Diamond League. She won there in 2024 which set her up for the Paris Olympic gold.

“She’d like to do it within the London Olympic Stadium with a British crowd.”

Painter put into context some other reasons why Hodgkinson can break the 800m world record and why it remains a daunting sporting challenge:

“Shoe expertise has superior a lot, observe expertise has superior so much, our understanding of the whole lot and the athletes’ understanding is rising on a regular basis so it’s getting nearer and nearer and I imagine she believes she will be able to do it now and I imagine she will be able to as nicely,” he says.

“You want so many components to go proper on the precise day, the climate must be nice, you want a little bit of a crowd behind you to provide somebody like Keely that carry and then you definitely want the race to go the fitting approach.”

Hodgkinson adds: “We’re attempting to push limits this yr. Braveness has been my phrase of the yr. Final yr was freedom, this yr it is braveness, so we’re attempting to only be brave. And that comes with danger – danger will get reward with braveness.”

Now comes a note of caution. Breaking a world record set in 1983 is not a given and many have fallen in sport after high hopes.

“I believe generally if you would like issues an excessive amount of generally it could go flawed with issues like that. I am very a lot taking the method this yr of having fun with the method, taking it week by week seeing what my physique can deal with and might do and simply seeing what outcomes include that,” Hodgkinson says. “On paper I am nonetheless a second and a half away, which looks as if an enormous chunk so I am hoping to take some chunks off that this season.”

Should Hodgkinson break the 800m world record this year, or even in the next few years, she’s aware of the historical significance.

“I do really feel like it might be actually nice historical past and I believe it is one thing lots of people would take pleasure in to see, particularly this era of athletes that we have,” Hodgkinson says. “The ladies that we’ve proper now have requirements getting larger and better yearly. Everybody else is working sooner, we’re simply all working sooner and we have got to begin someplace.

“It is something I do think about and something I would love to do. I’m definitely in the best shape mentally to do it, physically, but those kind of times that we’re talking about, every decimal point, every tenth matters.

“For me, I’ve all the time mentioned that the world file will not be a case of if, however when. I can not all the time plan for when… I’d say it is in my sights and it is one thing I see as breakable and achievable.”

Who set the 800m girls’s world file and why has it stood since 1983?

Kratochvilova set the ladies’s 800m world file on July 26, 1983 in Munich.

Initially Kratochvilova was a 400m runner with the intention of doubling up with the 200m. As an alternative she ran an 800m race in 1983 and set the world file which has stood ever since: 1:53:28.

Over the previous 4 a long time some have described the file as poisonous, with accusations of doping. Nonetheless, whereas particulars at the moment are recognized concerning the state-organised programme of East Germany, for instance, within the former Czechoslovakia much less is thought about how athletes had been coached and cared for within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.

Now in her 70s, Kratochvilova has all the time vehemently denied she took efficiency enhancing medication, insisting her performances on the observe had been all the way down to the arduous, bodily work her coach Miroslav Kvac adopted, together with her upbringing on a farm and a rigorous weight coaching regime.

Within the intervening 43 years, no athlete has managed to get notably near Kratochvilov’s world file – nobody has run underneath one minute and 54 seconds.

The second-fastest girls’s 800m is essentially forgotten: it was set by Nadezhda Olizarenko when working for the previous Soviet Union (USSR) in 1980, who was solely 15 hundredth’s of a second slower than Kratochvilova.

South African Caster Semenya’s quickest 800m is sort of a second slower that the present world file. She ran that point in 2018.

Hodgkinson presently has two of the highest 10 quickest 800m occasions – seventh & tenth quickest – and her greatest mark presently stands at 1:54:61, which is the UK nationwide file.