Keely Hodgkinson

Specialising in one of the toughest events in athletics which combines both endurance and speed, with many "unbreakable" female records and top marks set in the 1980s, she progressed very well into the senior ranks.

In February 2022, Hodgkinson set a British 800 m indoor record (improved in 2023), placing her sixth on the respective world all-time list, and then lowered her national outdoor record twice in 2023, becoming faster than any other British woman in history of the event by more than a second and entering the top ten on the outdoor global all-time list.

She also holds world indoor best in the 600 metres and was the 2021 and 2023 Diamond League 800 m champion.

At age 16, she became the 800 m European U18 champion and won England's U20 title.

A year later, she took bronze at the European U20 Championships.

Hodgkinson was the first junior woman in history to break the two-minute barrier in the indoor event.

Both her Tokyo result and junior indoor best are European U20 records, which made her at 800 m the fourth- and the second-fastest U20 woman of all time respectively.

She is a four-time British national champion.

Keely Hodgkinson was raised in Atherton near Leigh and Wigan in Greater Manchester, some 10.6 miles (17 km) northwest of the strict Manchester city centre.

She has three younger siblings.

Her mother Rachel trained for a time with Leigh Harriers while her father Dean had run in the London Marathon in the past.

Hodgkinson graduated from Fred Longworth High School in Tyldesley and Loughborough College.

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 U13 1200 m best was bettered only in 2019, remaining, as of 2023, the third-fastest on the respective British girl's all-time list.

Keely Nicole Hodgkinson (born 3 March 2002) is an English middle-distance runner specialising in the 800 metres.

She first made an impression aged barely 10, in 2012.

Competing among 70 finalists at the British Schools Modern Biathlon Championships in London, Hodgkinson finished second in the 500 metres run with a personal best (1:34.28) and also swam 50 m with a new best as well for an overall eighth place.

Her father advised her to run, and she was inspired by British heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

From that point, age-group titles and minor medals kept piling up for Keely, culminating in her winning at age 16 European Under-18 and England U20 titles, and, after an injury-affected winter, European U20 bronze a year later.

In 2013, still aged 10, she already had an unbeaten streak of 14 running events.

In winning a one-mile cross country course she became the first Leigh Harriers girl to claim the individual U11 girls' title in both the South East Lancashire League and the Red Rose League.

In 2014, the then 12-year-old won all her 13 track races (across 800–1500 metres events, with a 4:47 best at the latter) as well as many cross country competitions.

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.

Scholars debate whether effects of these setbacks were still evident the following year, when the youngster finished third in the U15 800 metres events at both the ESAA English Schools' Championships and England Athletics Championships.

Around that period she began to specialise in this distance while still running cross country.

About two weeks later, she ran her 16th undefeated race, winning a 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.

In any case, Hodgkinson rebounded the following year, in 2017, when the then 15-year-old raced the 800 metres already in the U17 age category.

Although initially fourth at the ESAA Championships, she went on to take her first gold medal at the England Championships, setting a lifetime best (2:06.85), before adding the 1500 m (UK) School Games title.

The golden Leigh girl was back.

In June 2018, at 16, Hodgkinson became the England U20 800 m champion.

The next month, she won the gold medal at the European Athletics U18 Championships held in Győr, Hungary, breaking the championship record in the process with a time of 2:04.84.

In August, she added titles at the England U17s and at the (UK) School Games with a competition record.

Named by Wigan Borough Council Sports Achiever of the Year, her season's best ranked her, at the time, fifth on the British U17 female all-time list (2:04.26).

Her 2019 athletics year was affected by shin problems for most of the winter.

Despite this, competing against athletes up to two years her senior, she placed second at the England U20s and earned bronze at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden, setting a new personal best.

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.

Hodgkinson is the 2022 and 2023 World Championships as well as the 2022 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, 2022 European champion and a two-time European indoor champion from 2021 and 2023, with her 2021 title secured as the youngest ever continental women's indoor 800 m winner.

In 2020, she became a student of criminology at the Leeds Beckett University, and took a gap year in 2021.

Hodgkinson joined Leigh Harriers at the age of nine, but initially swam with Howe Bridge Aces before devoting herself fully to running.