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Geraint Hughes gets exclusive access to Olympic 800m gold medalist Keely Hodgkinson at his training base in the Pyrenees.
Geraint Hughes gets exclusive access to Olympic 800m gold medalist Keely Hodgkinson at his training base in the Pyrenees.
If you become an Olympic champion, you can either sit back and bask in the glory of the moment, or you can make plans to become a legend in your sport, which is what 800m Olympic gold medalist Keeley Hodgkinson has decided to do.
The work to do so begins in the thin, rarefied air of the Pyrenees.In a small French mountain village called Font-Romeu at around 6,000 feet, Hodgkinson began working with other members of his coaching team, including coaches Trevor Painter and his wife, Jenny Meadows, an 800m runner. In 2009, winning the bronze of the World Championship.
Training at altitude, where the air is thinner and oxygen is scarcer, creates the perfect environment for an elite athlete like Hodgkinson to begin his grueling winter routine in preparation for next season.
As Painter explains, training at altitude allows the body to naturally produce more red blood cells to compensate for the lack of oxygen, so when the athlete returns to a lower altitude, their baseline fitness is more is big.
It’s a good start for any athlete and a well-trodden path for elite Olympic athletes.
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Miriam Walker-Khan reports from Paris after Hodgkinson stormed to gold in the women’s 800m.
For Hodgkinson, he plans to fill the 2025 season with Olympic champion ambitions.
Back on that glorious night in Paris in August, I asked Hodgkinson if she knew she was going to win the gold medal before the race began.
He just knew he could and probably would win the race.At 22, he was in the best physical shape of his young career, having set a new British 800m record just weeks before the Olympic final.
Hodgkinson believed in fate and that it was his night, and so it proved as he produced one of the most dominant displays on the Paris track.
So back to what Hodgkinson is doing in the Pyrenees, it’s because he and his coaches believe the Briton could become one of the true greats of athletics.
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Hodgkinson, the Olympic 800m champion, reflected on his victory in Paris and said he was always rooting for him to reach the final and win the gold medal.
At the age of 19, Hodgkinson burst onto the world stage by winning the 800m silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
That golden evening in early August was preceded by two silver medals at the World Championships, and gold changes everything.
“It’s amazing, crazy, the difference between silver and gold,” Hodgkinson says, explaining the more regular recognition and increased opportunities to do things outside of athletics.
Some of them have come in fashion, an industry he is passionate about, while he also received VIP treatment from Manchester United as he was feted on the pitch at Old Trafford in front of 75,000 fans.
Hodgkinson, who is from Atherton, outside Manchester, is a lifelong fan of the club and his family, also United supporters, looked on proudly as he showed off his gold medal to the crowd and received a framed T-shirt emblazoned with the Olympic 800m victory. time along with the corresponding number “1”.
Hodgkinson was honored during Manchester United’s match at Old Trafford
Meadows knows a thing or two about the 800m and predicts Hodgkinson could dominate the sport.
“There can be no more silver and bronze. He can dominate the sport and become a legend.”
And that starts with the 2025 season, where Hodgkinson, along with his trainers, will carefully select his racing schedule in what looks set to be a very busy year.
The European Indoor Championships in the Netherlands and the World Championships in China will both be held in March, before the highlight of the outdoor season comes at the World Championships in Japan in September.
There are also other ambitions in the form of records. But while there is certainty about the competitive goal, the approach to the stopwatch is “when it happens, it happens”.
The artist and Meadows have such faith in Hodkinson’s talent that they believe he will be able to break the 800m indoor and outdoor world records.
The indoor record is perhaps the easier of the two to break.The 800m outdoor world record was set in July 1983 and is the oldest remaining world record in athletics, with a time of 1:53.28 standing for years.
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Hodgkinson reflects on his gold medal winning performance in the 800m and his next target is to set the world record
Hodgkinson, while clearly getting faster and faster and potentially still has years to reach her potential. Her personal best, the sixth fastest 800m of all time, is just shy of Yarmila Kratochvilova’s world record, but there is already a sense that Hodgkinson is very capable. run at a pace of 1:54 sec.
Not only is Hodgkinson the best 800m runner in the world, but he’s also very comfortable over the 400m, so speed is a handy attribute.
Despite Hodgkinson’s success, the 22-year-old remains down-to-earth and fun-loving. Friends and family are her rock, while Pinter and Meadows are like a second family. Their daughter Arabella knows Hodgkinson only as “Aunt Keely.”
Those two not only keep Hodgkinson grounded, but also organize his schedule, allowing him space and time away from athletics and a work schedule that keeps him focused on nothing but his training regimen.
They joke, they smile, they laugh, but they continue to work hard as a unit.
Recovering from a 35-minute “warm-up” run at 6,000 feet not far from Font-Romeu, Hodgkinson says:
I asked if he was true to his word, to which he enthusiastically confirmed, gulping for more air.
A smiling Artist, watching a few yards away, with wicked timing and good humor, says:
With this atmosphere, there seems little doubt that 2025 will be another year in which Hodgkinson further cements his position as one of Britain’s current sporting greats.
