Keely Hodgkinson will start her out of doors season subsequent week and is specializing in this 12 months’s Diamond League occasions to interrupt Jarmila Kratochvilova’s ladies’s 800m world document from 1983; London hosts a Diamond League assembly in July, the place Hodgkinson can be competing
Final Up to date: 29/05/26 8:15am
Keely Hodgkinson is a six-time international medallist
Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson has not dominated out the potential for breaking athletics’ longest-standing world document on the London Diamond League assembly in July.
Hodgkinson set the primary world document of her profession in February, smashing the 24-year-old indoor 800m marker, set on the day she was born, in a single minute, 54.87 seconds in Lievin.
The Briton and her coaches are satisfied she has what it takes to decrease Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova’s near-43-year-old out of doors 800m time of 1 minute, 53.28 seconds, however Hodgkinson would nonetheless require an ideal storm of situations for all of it to come back collectively.
“Obviously I would love that to happen on home soil,” stated Hodgkinson, talking with 50 days to go till the Diamond League returns to the capital.
“I get really excited about London, the whole crowd and everything. I think as a British person competing there it’s just so much fun, and it’s definitely the main thing I’m looking forward to this year on the calendar.”
Hodgkinson defined that the choice to focus on Kratochvilova’s document, at any time when she does, can be a collective one in session along with her coaches, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows.
“I think we have a plan of what we would like to happen, obviously,” she stated. “The sport has its own plans sometimes, and it’s not something that you can straightaway plan and think, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’
“If I occur to come back into form the place I believe I wish to go it is sooner, or it occurs to be a bit later within the season, that might simply be the way it goes. I’ve not missed a coaching session, so I am in a very, actually good place.”
Hodgkinson is set to also compete at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham later this year (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
Hodgkinson: Enhanced Games is ‘nonsense’
Some have speculated Kratochvilova’s achievement was facilitated by performance-enhancing drugs, something the now-75-year-old has always denied, and the accusations have never been proven.
Earlier this month, the controversial Enhanced Games, which allows the use of such substances under, claims the organisation, strict medical supervision, premiered in Las Vegas.
Despite offering up to $1m (£744,00) for a “world document”, only one participating athlete, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev, managed to beat a world-standard time, doing so in a swimsuit banned in official competition.
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American Fred Kerley won the 100 metres at the Enhanced Games in 9.97 seconds, a time that would have placed him last in the final of the Paris Olympics two years ago, where he ran 9.81 and won bronze
In 2017, World Athletics, under the leadership of British Olympic champion Lord Sebastian Coe, the organisation’s president, established the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent authority responsible for managing integrity threats.
Asked about the importance of clean sport, Hodgkinson replied: “I believe it is simply having an appreciation for the onerous work and dedication that we put in.
“I think the sport has done a great job over the last couple of decades making it a clean sport. I do trust the people that I race against, and it’s not a thought in my brain that I think about.
“So yeah, we are going to name that factor [the Enhanced Games] nonsense, as a result of that is what it was.”
