Keely Hodgkinson to miss rest of 2024 with injury

Team GB’s Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson’s season has been ended by injury.

The 22-year-old, whose victory in Paris was the most watched event of the Games on terrestrial television, had been due to compete in her first race since winning gold  — the 400m at Berlin’s ISTAF athletics meet at the end of the month — before heading to the Diamond League meetings in Zurich and Brussels in September.

“No more races for me!! Unfortunately I picked up a small injury, but we achieved everything I had hoped to do this year, thank you for all the love and support!! See you on the track next year,” she posted on Instagram.

In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Hodgkinson explained that her next goal after achieving Olympic gold would be going for the world record, which has stood since 1983.

After winning all nine of her 800m races this year many believed her to be capable of beating the 1min 53.28sec record held by Jarmila Kratochvilova. Hodgkinson’s personal best, which she set earlier this yea , is 1:54.61, the sixth fastest time in history. Caster Semenya, the controversial runner who no longer competes, ran 1:54.25 in 2018.

“It is the longest standing track record ever – over 40 years now,” she said in the interview. “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.”

Work on beating the record will have to wait until next year, when she will also be looking at improving on her previous two silver medals at the World Championships when Tokyo hosts the event in September.

Hodgkinson’s next major meeting could be at the European Indoor Championships scheduled for March in the Netherlands which will be followed by the World Indoors Championships in China later that month.

“Disappointed not to finish things off in further style as still the energy and motivation for it, but it’s not been a bad season,” her coach Jenny Meadows added.

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