Keely Hodgkinson interview: Olympic champion targets track’s ‘impossible’ world record

One of the first people Keely Hodgkinson saw after winning the Olympic 800 metres was Jenny Meadows, a coach for whom one uplifting part of this golden journey had been having her faith and joy in athletics restored.

“Olympic champion – what’s left to achieve?” asked Meadows, whose own considerable feats on the global stage were forever diluted by doped opponents.

Hodgkinson responded with just two words: “World record.”

Given the timing, minutes after the realisation of a dream, it was a statement that suggested Hodgkinson will not let all the doors which will now open become a distraction from the simple pursuit of speed. Considering the enormity of the women’s 800 metres world record, set in 1983 by Jarmila Kratochvilova during an era of Eastern Bloc dominance, it was a statement which could barely also have been bolder.

No world record has lasted longer and plenty in the sport, such as double Olympic champion Svetlana Masterkova, have viewed the prospect of beating it as “impossible”.

Days on from her gold medal, it is a goal that Hodgkinson is not just standing by but ready to expand upon. Sponsors Nike also appear to be gearing up for their next big campaign.

“It is the longest standing track record ever – over 40 years now,” she says. “I’d love to get close to it. I started to really believe we could a few weeks ago. I work closely with innovations at Nike. If technology is helping the human body to do amazing things, I think that’s a great thing. They have got a project of trying to get to the women’s 800m record – what they can do to help – and I welcome that. The fans get excited when they see great performances and times that they never thought could happen.”

So, after Eliud Kipchoge and his “1:59 Challenge” to break two hours for a road marathon, perhaps a “Project 1:53” to beat Kratochvilova’s 1min 53.28sec?

“Yeah, a bit like what they did for Eliud,” says Hodgkinson. “I don’t think you would be able to do that [exact approach] on the track but they love to look at the science. How can we help on the bend of an 800? What shoes can give you that? Now we are at the milli-fractions. We’ve got a great talented group that will push us to go faster. I believe I can go quicker.”

After a phenomenal 1min 54.61sec two weeks before Paris, Hodgkinson’s pre-Olympic training in St-Germain-en-Laye – specifically, a tried-and-tested 2x400m session with 30 seconds rest between – gave a clear idea of what she could run: a late 1min53sec. But that was in the knowledge that, at 22, she has not reached her physical prime and at least two more Olympic cycles are likely.

“My body is naturally going to get stronger,” she says. “I’d love to be a four-time Olympian and let’s see if we can bring home medals from every single one. That’s a great challenge.”

‘It is not about the money. I like to work with brands I believe in’

Hodgkinson also has a clear-headed idea about how she will approach other life-changing opportunities. The list of fashion-houses and companies who would like to associate with her is long and lengthening. The list of actual commercial partners has been deliberately limited and, having just agreed a deal with Rimmel (it did her London Diamond League make-up), she intends to remain selective.

“It is not really about what is put in front of me — the money,” she says. “If you did everything, you would be ruining yourself basically trying to fit everything in. The main focus is track and field; that is what brings in the great sponsors who I do work with. Fortunately I’m in a position where I can pick and choose.

“I think there is also a strategic side to who you work within in terms of where you want your brand to go. I like to work with brands I believe in basically.”

And so, as a massive James Bond fan, she chose Omega. “I love the history,” she says. She has been with Nike since the age of 17 and, with her sometimes blunt feedback, is now actively involved in their development of ever faster track spikes. The latest have an air-bubble in the forefoot for which the air pressire can be adjusted and a carbon plate running through super responsive ZoomX foam. Their laboratory includes a robot, gender-specific dummies and hundreds of motion cameras.

Her work with the Swedish sports nutrition company Maurten has similarities in that there is a mutually beneficial performance element to working with experts. Around 80 per cent of elite runners are believed to be using its “bicarb system”, a pre-race mixture of gels and mini tablets designed to flush acidic hydrogen ions and lactate more quickly. Hodgkinson says its innovation has been “incredible”.

‘I’m mentally better equipped than after Tokyo’

There is also an openness about the significant challenges that she has faced, notably post-Tokyo when she went from being largely unknown to a teenage silver medallist and experienced what she calls a “stage of depression” during an Olympic comedown. “It’s weird — I was 19, you just think, ‘It will be OK’,” she says. “You get to the winter months, when it gets hard and it’s cold and you don’t want to do it. I remember feeling just a bit down all the time. I didn’t know why.

“For me, it was taking it one day at a time. Getting through that day, then you have done a week. I just had to know there was probably going to be an ending to it and you just have to keep going.

“Now I’ve been through that, and I know the feeling, I’ll know how to approach it this time mentally in order to get through it probably quicker… or it might not even come at all.”

In parents Dean and Rachel, as well as coaches Meadows and Trevor Painter, she has a down-to-earth support network whose basic outlook is to enjoy being on this magical journey rather than take things too seriously and over-analyse the inevitable bumps. They all hail from the same area around Wigan — Hodgkinson stresses that her home is the “small but mighty Atherton” — and they share strong values around community and hard work.

Of the post-Tokyo low, she says: “I talked to my mum about it a lot. She said, ‘Well, you have been through a lot this year, probably the comedown of adrenaline, shock and things like that’. I’m still pretty motivated after the Olympics to carry on racing. I think I’m mentally better equipped.”

‘I definitely felt the pressure — it added in some nerves and stress’

How Hodgkinson handled a very different pressure in Paris was certainly mightily impressive. While just making the Tokyo team was unexpected, she arrived in France as the clear favourite for gold. What was striking in every interview, however, was her acceptance of this status while retaining a free-spirited sense of adventure about the whole experience. “Pressure is a privilege,” she would repeatedly say, making no attempt to take the more conventional sporting route of deflecting or playing down expectations.

“I definitely felt the pressure — it added in some nerves and stress,” she now says. “It was not that I felt I was going to disappoint anyone. I wanted that [gold] for myself and I could see other people knew I could do that.

“Just those words ‘The Olympics’ brings a lot more stigma in a positive way. I didn’t go on social media too much. There’s a lot of positivity out there but the brain will latch onto the negative and you don’t need any energy drain. We knew not to be complacent. I’d run a super quick time in London, which filled me with confidence but that can be taken away by taking things for granted.

“I kept saying to myself, ‘If you don’t have it [the pressure], you would want it’. If the opportunity wasn’t there, if I wasn’t a gold medal favourite, I would be thinking, ‘I want to be in a gold medal position’. You always want what you don’t have. You always want more. That’s how I calmed my brain down a little. I [also] just kind of thought, ‘At the end of the day, all I can really be is my best and hope that’s enough’.”

The path to Olympic gold would involve three races over four days. The worst part, she says, was the rounds before the final when, in her position, you cannot win but you can certainly lose.

‘Priorities … getting all glammed up and feeling good’

On the day of the final itself, Hodgkinson had a lie-in, relaxed and slept for most of the day and tried to keep herself distracted. With all the hard work now done after three weeks away in France, her coach Painter used the downtime to get his washing done at a Paris launderette. At around 4.30pm, Hodgkinson started to get ready: “Do the bag – do not forget anything,” before “priorities … getting all glammed up and feeling good” ahead of arriving at the Stade de France for a 9.47pm date with destiny in front of 70,000 people. Her race would attract the highest BBC audience – 9.1 million – during the entire Games.

Hodgkinson believes that she lost at the World Championships last year on a split-second moment that gave Kenya’s Mary Moraa a precious metre long before the final straight. There would be no tactical errors in Paris and, with 500m to go, Hodgkinson boldly took the lead before controlling the pace while saving a final gear to emphatically sprint clear of Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma and Moraa.

“You have got plans but you always have to see, you have to assess,” says Hodgkinson of the high-speed chess that goes on even while a brutal physical test is unfolding. “I wasn’t opposed to taking the lead. I felt like, at that moment, with the shape I’m in, I can kind of run it however and I would be difficult to beat. Anything can happen, you don’t know what other people have got.

“It was a bit slower than I expected but that was fine. I felt really strong. It’s an 800 race but it begins at 700. I do feel like I am in the best shape I have ever been in, I just had to trust in that and I delivered.”

As she crossed the line, Hodgkinson raised her left hand to her face in almost disbelief before a surge of adrenaline hit and she skipped down the track, punching the air in joy. She had been thinking about the race every day for a year and her first thought was to find the area where some 40 family and friends, including her parents, had gathered.

They were decked out in “KH800” tornado T-shirts that had been designed by Dean, who also came up with the “worker bee” logo for what they now call their M11 Track Club. “We couldn’t keep calling it Trev and Jen’s group,” explains Meadows.

Like Painter, Dean is a former rugby league player. He has a metal fabrication business and clearly also an artistic eye. “A man of many talents – he loves creating things,” says Hodgkinson. “Always for my birthday, he writes me nice poems. I look forward to it every year.”

Hodgkinson would join the family at a Paris bar near the Moulin Rouge following her anti-doping and media commitments, treating herself to a “cheeky” glass of wine before finally getting back to the Olympic Village at 4am. She then watched the race for the first time. “Surreal,” she says. Hodgkinson usually sleeps for 10 hours every day but an alarm call would follow less than two hours later for a series of breakfast interviews.

Great Britain had previously had only nine female track-and-field Olympic champions: Ann Packer, Mary Rand, Mary Peters, Tessa Sanderson, Sally Gunnell, Denise Lewis, Kelly Holmes, Christine Ohuruogu and Jessica Ennis-Hill. To this most illustrious list, we could now add the name Keely Hodgkinson.

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