British record-holder aiming to reassert her 800m dominance as she sets sights on completing a European hat-trick in Birmingham.

During the indoor season, everything Keely Hodgkinson touched turned to gold. Her 400m personal best was lowered, closely followed by the arrival of the 800m world indoor record and the world indoor title in quick succession. 

Her springtime performances were so dominant and her form so good that the conversation quickly turned towards when the Olympic champion might target Jarmila Kratochvilova’s outdoor world record of 1:53.28 that has stood since 1983. 

The London Diamond League meeting on July 18 seemed like the perfect place to go for it and a build-up that included a season-opener at the Stockholm Diamond League in June then the Prefontaine Classic at the start of July only served to underline the feeling that the stars were all about to align. 

Elite sport has a knack for upsetting the best-laid plans, however, and a withdrawal from the 400m final at the British Championships due to a “twinge” was not in the script. Neither was the fall during training that left Hodgkinson with cuts to her knees and rather scuppered the plan for fireworks in Eugene, where she came second to world champion Lilian Odira. There was victory to celebrate in London, but it was extremely solid rather than truly spectacular. 

And all of that came after the early-season race that got the athletics world talking. Up until Stockholm, Hodgkinson had raced, and convincingly beaten, Audrey Werro on a number of occasions – including the final of the world indoor championships. There was no surprise, then, when the Briton made her move with 300m to go at the Olympic stadium in the Swedish capital and began to establish a gap. 

What did raise eyebrows, however, was that the Swiss didn’t go away this time and managed to produce the kind of finishing speed that not only saw her catch up with, but overtake, the European champion. 

Hodgkinson hit the line in a British record of 1:54.33 but had to settle for second place as Werro became only the third woman in history to run under 1:54 by clocking 1:53.98, a national record she then lowered to 1:53.80 in Paris at the end of June to prove it was no fluke.

After that Stockholm showdown, Hodgkinson openly admitted to having been caught off-guard by the European U23 champion’s performance but vowed at the time: “I won't let that happen again.” We will find out this week if she can stay true to her word.

The pair have not raced each other since that June 7 encounter, but are now the central characters in what promises to be the blockbuster event of the European Championships that start in Birmingham on Monday morning (August 9). 

The arrival of 400m hurdles world champion Femke Broeders-Bol to the 800m adds another element of intrigue but it’s the re-match between Werro and Hodgkinson that has been whetting the appetite of many athletics fans from the moment they crossed the line in Sweden. 

In front of a home crowd, at an Alexander Stadium track she knows well, Hodgkinson could barely have asked for a better stage upon which to try to reassert her dominance and, asked if she considers herself as the world number one this year, she replied: “Yes, I still believe I’m very much capable of that.”

After London, Hodgkinson headed to a training camp in Portugal to fine tune her preparations. With the knee issues now healed, she is welcoming the “clean slate” that these championships offer. 

“I feel in a good place,” she adds of an event that will feature the four fastest women in the world over 800m this year. “Obviously there was a bit of a tough patch in June/July but I’m happy, I’m excited to compete and I think it will bring out the best in me. It’s really interesting to look at two years ago and how the standard in Europe has come on [since]. It means that a European title is just as important and just as fun as a world title at this point.”

If there is one thing that temporarily dents Hodgkinson’s positivity, however, it is the narrative that has developed around that Stockholm defeat to Werro. Her high profile status brings with it an added level of scrutiny and, at times, criticism – so she was stung by some of the comments that followed the loss. 

“I don’t really think I did anything wrong in that race,” she counters. “I didn’t know what [Audrey] was capable of at that point and I think that just shows you can’t underestimate anybody. If you look at all our other head-to-heads, you wouldn’t have thought she was going to hang on. 

“I don’t think I did anything wrong. I think that’s where I was at that point in the season. It was my opening race [of the outdoor season]. I think people are trying to make me feel like it was a failure and it really wasn’t. That was a British record. It was my fastest time ever and I’m going to remind myself of that because I’m proud of that.

“I just think we’ve gone on since there. I had a tricky few weeks but it’s really good. Audrey’s come on really well, Femke’s running well, it’s going to be a really good run. This is what I train for. This is the exciting moment.”

No British woman has ever won three successive European titles in the same event but, having taken 800m gold in Munich four years ago and in Rome in 2024, Hodgkinson has the opportunity to break new ground. 

She will embark on that quest with Tuesday morning’s heats, before follow-up appointments with Thursday’s lunchtime semi-finals and then the Friday night showpiece. Given how the event is now being run, it’s a safe bet to predict that she will have to run faster than the 1:59.04 from 2022 and the 1:58.65 from Rome that previously took her to European gold.

Hodgkinson might only be 24 but, in terms of senior 800m championships experience, she certainly has the edge on both Werro and Broeders-Bol. The Briton has never come away from an international championships final without a medal and, though she openly dislikes the qualifying stages, she has become adept at negotiating them. 

“I think experience can be both a positive and a negative thing,” she says. “It can sometimes allow you to overthink so I like to go back to basics, to when I was young, upcoming, didn’t care, I had nothing to lose and I think it’s important to me that I hold on to that and I race with courage and fearlessness. I think that’s how I get the best out of myself and ultimately I will just do the best I can. 

“The standard now in Europe has gone up so I think the heats and the semis are going to be a lot faster than we’ve seen in the last couple of years. It does mean you’ve got to bring your A game a bit sooner, but I think that’s a bit better for me because I like to line up and feel like: ‘This matters. This is important. I’m going to have to run fast. I’ve got these girls to run against’. So we will have to see how it pans out.”

Should all go to plan for Hodgkinson, it would cement her status as one of Britain’s major sporting stars. Olympic gold in Paris catapulted her to a new level of recognition, attention and speculation that she admits is not always easy to deal with.

“I think anyone I’ve ever bumped into has been very nice and supportive, which is always great,” she says. “I would say there’s probably more the issue online of opinions and perspectives and guesses and assumptions. You don’t really know what’s going on in someone’s life and sometimes it’s quite frustrating. 

“You have to be a bit thick-skinned to be able to just put that aside and completely ignore it and just really focus on who you are, what you want to do. It’s definitely something I’ve learned this last year. I think as the sport grows and the athletes grow you are subjected to more opinions and it can be frustrating at times. But I think you’ve just got to let that go. Sometimes I delete Twitter. That app is awful. And I just focus on what I’ve got to do.”

There is some light to be found amid the online darkness, however, and Hodgkinson uses the example of an allegation around her training partner – Commonwealth 800m champion Georgia Hunter Bell, who will be contesting the 1500m in Birmingham – as to how surreal things can get. 

“Me and Georgia were laughing the other day because we saw a TikTok, and it was like: ‘Georgia Bell pays Keely £200,000 not to do the Commonwealth Games’. I thought: ‘Well, I didn’t get that money so where the f*** is it going?’ People make up stuff. We just laugh about it, but it’s a strange world we live in sometimes.”

Instead, Hodgkinson will place her focus on the opportunity at hand and the possibility of achieving success in front of the aforementioned home crowd that will feature some familiar faces. 

“I don’t really see it as pressure,” she says of the high expectation levels. “I just see it as more of a motivation. There are going to be a lot of my family there to support and hopefully I’m able to stand on top of the podium. That would be incredibly special and would mean almost just as much to me as winning in Paris, to be honest.”