Keely Hodgkinson

It was a very tense battle for the line against Mu this time in the final 100 m at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon in July. After one of the most thrilling finishes of the Worlds, Hodgkinson came only 0.08 s behind her to claim the silver medal with a season's best of 1:56.38, comfortably ahead of Moraa. Less than two weeks later at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, she was unexpectedly defeated by fast-finishing Moraa earning also a silver, 1:57.40 to 1:57.07. The same August, she lived up to her status as a pre-race favourite and secured her first major senior outdoor championship title, winning decisively her two-laps event at the European Championships Munich 2022.

2021 began with the first British women's world under-20 record for 36 years. Hodgkinson returned and won in Vienna for the second consecutive year in 1:59.03 – her first result under 2 minutes, making her the first junior woman in history to break this mark in the indoor 800 m. She lowered massively by exactly two seconds previous best set by Ethiopia's Meskerem Legesse in 2004. Her record stood for less than a month, however, before being improved by her chief rival and age-mate, USA's Athing Mu, who ran a time of 1:58.40.

On the heels of a successful 2021 season, Hodgkinson opened her athletics year indoors on 19 February at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix, racing 800 m with a clear win in 1:57.20. It was the fastest indoor performance by a woman in 20 years – since the precise day she was born, when the world record was established. She set the British record, all-comers' record (best performance on country's soil), the fastest ever mark by a teenager, and the sixth-fastest indoor mark all time. Heading to the World Indoors Belgrade 2022 in March she was a gold medal favourite. However, she had to withdrew from the competition after warm-up in Belgrade due to a quad injury.

She attended Fred Longworth High School in Tyldesley, and Loughborough College. In 2020, she became a student of criminology at the Leeds Beckett University, and took a gap year in 2021.

At the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games in August, Hodgkinson won the silver medal, taking almost two seconds off her previous personal best and almost six seconds off her pre-2021 best with a time of one minute 55.88 seconds, behind Athing Mu (1:55.21). She broke Kelly Holmes' 26-year-old British record of 1:56.21 and the 1978 European U20 best of 1:57.45. All top five and the seventh woman set their lifetime bests. For the first time in history three women from Britain competed in the Olympic final, with Jemma Reekie narrowly missing out on bronze and Alexandra Bell placing seventh.

Until October she was not funded by UK Athletics as the organisation, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, did not add anyone onto its World Class Performance Programme in 2020. She was backed by businessman Barrie Wells, who had previously helped fund 20 athletes to the 2012 London Summer Games; he matched her £15,000 a year Lottery funding allowing for warm weather training in Florida. Hodgkinson is one of Wells Trust's athlete ambassadors.

Her 2019 athletics year was affected by shin problems for most of the winter. Despite this, she placed second at the England under-20s and took bronze at the U20 Europeans held in Borås, Sweden, setting a new personal best of 2:03.40.

In June 2018, at 16, Hodgkinson became the England under-20 800 m champion. The next month, she won a gold medal at the European U18 Championships held in Győr, Hungary, finishing in 2:04.84 and breaking the championship record in the process. In August, she added titles at the England under-17s, and at the UK School Games with a competition record. In October, Wigan Borough Council named Hodgkinson Sports Achiever of the Year, selecting her for its Believe Talent Fund. Her season's and lifetime best was 2:04.26.

Aged 14, she finished third in the 800 m under-15 events at the ESAA English Schools' Championships, and at the England Championships. Around that period Hodgkinson began to specialise at this distance while still running cross country. The next year, in 2017, running in the U17 800m races, she came fourth at the ESAA Championships, and took her first gold medal at the England Championships, setting a lifetime best of 2:06.85. She added the 1500m UK School Games title.

In 2015, she had to limit training and starts due to a mastoidectomy surgery to remove a tumour on her ear (which has left her 95% deaf in this ear) followed by problems with knees.

In 2014, the then 12-year-old won all her 13 track races (across 800–1500 metres events) as well as many cross country competitions. She took her third Greater Manchester title on a 2.75 km cross country course, and later defended both her track titles, breaking championship records – the latter of which had stood since 1985. Her 1200 m best was bettered only in 2019, remaining, as of 2021, the third-fastest on the British U13 girl's all-time list.

Track results only. Hodgkinson competed also at the ECCA English Championships (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) with best place being fifth on a 5 km course in 2018, and at the cross country ESAA Championships (2016, 2017, 2018) with best place being second on a 3.8 km course in 2018.

The next year, in 2013, Keely had an unbeaten streak of 14 consecutive running events. In winning a one-mile cross country course she became the first Leigh Harriers girl to take the individual under-11 title in both the South East Lancashire League and the Red Rose League. About two weeks later, she ran her 16th undefeated race, winning 2 km course with the lead of 45 seconds. On the track, as a first-year U13, she became double Greater Manchester champion at the 800 and 1200 metres.

At age of 10, she competed in the British Schools Modern Biathlon Championships in London. She finished second in the 500 metres with a personal best of 1:34.28 and took eighth place overall. Her father advised her to run, and she was inspired by British heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill winning a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

Keely Nicole Hodgkinson (born 3 March 2002) is an English athlete specialising in the 800 metres. At the age of 19, she won the silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, breaking the British record set by Kelly Holmes in 1995. She is the 2022 World Championships and 2022 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, 2022 European champion (her first major senior outdoor gold), and the youngest ever European indoor women's 800 m champion from Toruń 2021. Both Hodgkinson's Tokyo result and her junior indoor mark are European U20 records, making her at 800 m the fourth-fastest and the second-fastest under-20 woman of all time respectively. In 2021, she became the Diamond League champion. In February 2022, she set the British 800 m indoor record, placing her sixth on the respective world all-time list.

In May, Keely secured her first major international outdoor victory at the Golden Spike in Ostrava, posting for the first ever time sub-2 minute mark outdoors with 1:58.89 as she broke by almost a second long-standing UK junior record of Charlotte Moore. While not the fastest European U20 women's result, officially it was also the European junior record, beating Birte Bruhns' mark of 1:59.17 set in 1988. At the end of June, she defended her British title at the Nationals which doubled up as Olympic trials, securing a place on the plane to Tokyo, outsprinting experienced Scottish duo Jemma Reekie and Laura Muir on the final straight. A week later, she lowered her PB to 1:57.51 when finishing fourth at the Stockholm Diamond League meet Bauhaus-galan, setting the British U23 record.

On 1 February, still only 17, Hodgkinson won 800 m event at the Vienna Indoor Track & Field competition in a European U20 record time of 2:01.16. She broke Kirsty Wade's long-standing 1981 British U20 record of 2:02.88, and Aníta Hinriksdóttir's European U20 mark set in 2015 by 0.4 seconds. The same month, she went on to take her first national title at the British Indoor Championships. Outdoors in August, she won two BMC gold standard races in Trafford with a new best in the first of them, and then improved it to 2:01.78 at the end of the month to finish second at a meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden. In what was her international outdoor debut at senior level, Hodgkinson lost only to the 2019 world silver medallist, Raevyn Rogers. In September, she also claimed the British outdoor title to become the youngest winner since 1974. She clocked even better lifetime best with 2:01.73, when ending her season in Rovereto (5th), Italy three days later.

On Hodgkinson's senior major championship debut, four days after her 19th birthday, she became the youngest British winner at the European Athletics Indoor Championships for more than half a century and the youngest ever women's 800 m European indoor champion after a tactical win over a quality field in Toruń. Only Marilyn Neufville has been a younger UK gold medallist when winning the 400 metres in 1970 at age 17, and Hodgkinson was younger than fellow Briton Jane Colebrook, who became the then-youngest European 800 m champion in 1977.