Her coach Trevor Painter talks through the 12 races that shaped Hodgkinson’s 2024, leading to the promised land of Olympic glory
For Keely Hodgkinson, the beginning of the athletics year normally revolves around the indoor season. Her coaching team of Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows like to use it to “break the winter monotony” and “work a lot more on intensity and speed”.
With the biggest summer of her life on the horizon, however, injuries to the 22-year-old’s knee and hamstring closed the door on the chance to compete in front of a home crowd at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow.
It was one of a few hurdles that needed to be cleared on the road to Paris, where everything was ultimately alright on the night for the 800m star who emulated one of her heroes, Kelly Holmes, by becoming Olympic champion over the two-lap distance.
It’s a performance that did much to earn her your vote as British Female Athlete of the Year in the 2024 AW Readers’ Awards but there were other highlights and important landmarks along the way during a campaign that saw Hodgkinson race 12 times in total, winning every 800m she contested.
Painter sat down to talk through the summer, race by race, and how each played its part in laying the path to gold.
Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)
Savona International Meeting (May 15)
400m – 51.61
“It was the first time since 2020 that Keely hadn’t done an indoor season and, if we’d had a couple more weeks, we’d have been in Glasgow,” says Painter. “But if you get an injury you’ve got to be patient and, come May, we knew she was healthy and ready to go.
“Because of the injury restrictions, we couldn’t do any of the really fast stuff and had to just park that for a while. It gave us an opportunity to work a lot deeper on aspects like strength and conditioning.
“We came into the summer with a much bigger base and thankfully the speed was still there because she opened the year with a 400m PB, so we must have done something right.
“She doesn’t get many opportunities to run 400m so you just pray for a fast track and good weather but, sure enough, just as the athletes went to the blocks, it started to rain. It was like: ‘Are you serious?’ Keely came second and the athlete that won the race, Sharlene Mawdsley, went on to run some really fast times. Keely wasn’t too far behind her so, if she’d had more opportunities at 400m, I feel she’d have run sub-51 at some stage in the summer.”
Keely Hodgkinson at Prefontaine Classic (Getty)
Prefontaine Classic, Eugene (May 25)
800m – 1:55.78
“I was expecting Keely to run 1:55. Training was going well and it was just about getting her back on the track, because she hadn’t done an 800m since September the previous year. We said: ‘Just run the first lap in 57.5. That’s probably going to put you in fourth or fifth place, then commit to that last 300m and see what happens’.
“It went perfectly. The athletes at the front went a bit too quickly and Keely was sat about a second behind. She nailed that last 150m and ran away from them. Straight away, we knew that gold in Paris was on the cards. [Defending Olympic champion] Athing Mu was still ‘is she, isn’t she [running at the Olympics]? What page is she on?’ but we knew [world champion] Mary Moraa had been a difficult opponent to beat and Keely hadn’t quite got it right on a few occasions, so it was important to make sure we conquered that.
“Mary had been winning the tactical races in the past but when Athing and Keely put the foot down, Mary can’t compete. She hasn’t broken 1:56 at the end of the day, whereas Keely and Athing have done it a number of times. We know that if it’s a fast race from the gun then the odds are in our favour but tactically, if there are more things that come into play, we’ve got to make sure we get the tactics right. We did that there, so that took the pressure off Keely, and she could focus on the rest of the summer.
“She’s very intuitive. We never say: ‘This is what you’ve got to do in a race’ but she goes in there with a lot of understanding of what might happen and then it’s just down to her to pick the right thing, to pick the right story.
“One of Keely’s biggest strengths is her composure under pressure and she thrives on it. You see a lot of people go missing when it comes to the race, whereas Keely lives for that gladiatorial experience.”
Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)
European Championships, Rome (June 10, 11, 12)
800m – 2:02.46 (heat), 1:58.07 (semi-final), 1:58.65 (final)
“In the heat she was just chilling, and then in the semi-final she jogged 1:58. It was unbelievable how easy it was. She came off the track and said: ‘I think I can front run a 1:55 without a pacemaker.’ We said: ‘Okay, that would be great!’ But then, the next day, she woke up not feeling well [sore throat, headache and cold symptoms] and it was then a battle to run. We didn’t even know she was going to run until they were calling us into the call room, and she said: ‘I’m going to go for it’.
“For Keely it’s not about winning money and earning things like that, it’s about titles, and she wants to finish with as many decorations to her name as possible. She wanted to win that championship and she executed the final really well.”
Keely Hodgkinson in Manchester (Getty)
UK Championships, Manchester (June 29, 30)
400m – 52.06 (heat), 52.22 (final)
“There were some pretty decent performances at the champs and it’s a myth about the north that you can’t run fast there. Manchester is often cold and wet, and that’s where the problem lies with people coming to race there – they don’t enjoy it. We train on that track quite often, so it’s no problem to us.
“We had been hoping for a faster time and to take that 400m PB down again but Keely was still feeling some of the after effects of the illness from Rome and running 52.06 in the heat snookered her because she ended up as a fastest qualifier and with lane one for the final. It’s impossible to run fast over 400m in lane one and you’ve got no advantage whatsoever.
“She needed a little luck but the three times she’s done a 400m at the national champs she’s had lane eight twice and lane one once. It’s as if the 400m gods don’t want her to do it!”
FBK Games, Hengelo (July 7)
800m – 1:57.36
“We were hoping for another 1:55 and to make a statement but, building up to the race, the weather turned quite bad. It wasn’t ideal for running fast so Keely just focused on winning the race and controlling it. Then it was on to London. That was where we wanted to really make a statement.”
Georgia Bell, Keely Hodgkinson and Jemma Reekie (Getty)
London Athletics Meet (July 20)
800m – 1:54.61 [British record]
“I’d spoken to Keely and said: ‘This is where you could win the gold, not in Paris. If you get your job done right here, and go sub 1:55 on this track, then everyone’s just going to be letting you do what you want in Paris.’ Thankfully, it came to life.
“She committed to the race, and I think she went through in about 56.5 then around 58 for the second lap. It was good information for us, because we’d been tracking everyone all season, and anyone who had run 56 seconds for the first lap didn’t break 60 on the second lap so, going into Paris, we knew that we could go 56 and then 58. Also the pacemaker went a bit too quick in London so Keely more or less did the whole work on her own. We were confident that that would be the story in Paris as well.”
Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)
Paris Olympics (August 2, 4, 5)
800m – 1:59.31 (heat), 1:56.86 (semi-final), 1:56.72 (final)
“Keely had wanted to go out and put on a show. She was still buoyed by the 1:54 in London, and she came off the track that day saying she felt 1:53 was possible. If you’re going into a championships feeling that you’re in 1:53 shape (the world record is 1:53.28), and all the stats are backing that up, then you’re in a pretty good place.
“So she wanted to put on a show in the final but myself and Jenny said: ‘You don’t need to run 1:53, let’s just make sure of the gold. If you want to run 1:53 you’re going to have to run the first lap in 55 seconds and then deal with that consequence but, if you just want to win the Olympics, then 1:56 or 1:55 will do that for you’.
“The nerve wracking thing was that, in that final, she went through 400m in 58! I saw the clock and thought ‘oh, shit’ because it just opens the door to other people and gives them a sniff. If it had been 56 Keely would have been pulling away on the back straight and the last 200m would have been a procession. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that luxury. We had to wait until the last 80m, when she put the foot down, to be able to relax.
“I’m normally really chilled. I know what shape the athletes are in and I just enjoy the moment and try to remember as much as I can. But, for this one, I was a mess for 300m!”
Keely Hodgkinson and her parents (Getty)
The next chapter…
“We’re very proud of Keely. To have the world in your hands like that, and go in as a favourite where everyone’s looking at you, is a difficult thing to deal with, especially at the Olympics. To hold it all together at 22 years old like she did is fantastic.
“She wanted to put a big time down at the end of the season but she felt her hamstring a little bit before the final and then went to Marbella with her family for a few days after the Olympics so there was a week where she didn’t have physio and wasn’t able to do rehab. It caused a little bit too much trouble to fix in a short space of time so we decided to shut the season down then. There was no point in risking it.
“She would have loved to have done the Diamond League Final and won a third one but we’ll just have to wait until next year [for that]. With the timetable having changed and the World Championships being the very end of the season, it means the race you do before the championships is hopefully where you’ll put your marker down and then you’re going in with a target on your back. We just need to keep her happy and healthy and put her in the position to perform as well as she can.”
» This feature first appeared in the December issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here
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