Keely Nicole Hodgkinson (born 3 March 2002) is an English middle-distance runner specialising in the 800 metres. Over this distance, she won gold medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics and the 2026 World Indoor Championships. She is also a two-time winner at the European Athletics Championships and has won silver and bronze medals at World Championships. Hodgkinson is the world record holder over 800 m indoors and the British record holder over 800 m outdoors. She is a four-time national champion.
At the age of 19, she won the silver medal at the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics, breaking the British record set by Kelly Holmes in 1995. Hodgkinson proceeded to win silver medals at the 2022 World Championships, the 2023 World Championships and the 2022 Commonwealth Games. She became a European outdoors champion in 2022 and 2024 and a European indoor champion in 2021 and 2023. She was also the 2021 Diamond League finals 800 m winner.
At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Hodgkinson led the final from near the start, and then broke away in the last 100 metres to cross the line ahead of Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa. She was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2024, and was awarded an MBE for contribution to athletics in the 2025 New Year Honours list. An injury-affected year in 2025 saw Hodgkinson win bronze at the World Athletics Championships.
In 2026, Hodgkinson won the World Indoor title in Torún. During the outdoor season, major new rivalries emerged with Audrey Werro and Femke Broeders-Bol, culminating in second-place finishes for Hodgkinson behind Werro and ahead of Broeders-Bol at both the European Athletics Championships and the World Athletics Ultimate Championship.
Early life and background Keely Nicole Hodgkinson was born on 3 March 2002 in Atherton, Greater Manchester, and grew up there. She attended Fred Longworth High School in Tyldesley, where she was friends with fellow pupil and future England footballer Ella Toone. Hodgkinson also attended Loughborough College in Leicestershire. In 2021, she began a degree in criminology at Leeds Beckett University, but later dropped out to focus on her athletics career.
Athletics career 2011–2017: Early career Hodgkinson joined Leigh Harriers at the age of nine and won county championships in middle-distance events. She also swam with Howe Bridge Aces Swimming Club before devoting herself fully to running.
In 2012, aged ten, she competed at the British Schools Modern Biathlon Championships in London. Hodgkinson finished second in the 500 m run, and after the 50 m swim, she ended in eighth place overall. Her father encouraged her to focus on athletics rather than swimming, and she was inspired by Jessica Ennis-Hill winning the gold medal in the heptathlon at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
In 2013, she became the first Leigh Harrier to claim the individual U11 girls' title in both the South East Lancashire League and the Red Rose League. She ran her 16th consecutive undefeated race two weeks later in the Mid-Lancashire Cross Country League at U11 level. At U13 level, she became Cheshire and Manchester champion in both the 800 and 1200 m. In 2014, she took her third Greater Manchester U13 title on a cross country course.
At the age of 13, Hodgkinson had to limit training after a mastoidectomy to remove a tumour on her ear, which left her 95% deaf in that ear. She also suffered from knee issues. The following year, she finished third in the U15 800 m events at both the ESAA English Schools' Athletics Championships and England Athletics Championships. In 2017, she raced the 800 m in the U17 age category, and won her first gold medal at the England Championships, before adding the 1500 m UK School Games title.
2018–2020 In June 2018, aged 16, Hodgkinson became the England U20 800 m champion. The following 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 won the England U17 title before setting a competition record time of 2:04.89 on way to victory at the (UK) School Games. At the Believe Sports Awards in Wigan, she was named as the Sports Achiever of the Year. In June 2019, Hodgkinson competed at the England U20 Championships, placing second, and she earned bronze at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden. During 2019, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows began coaching her in Manchester.
In February 2020, aged 17, Hodgkinson set the second-fastest female U20 performance ever in the indoor 800 m at the Vienna Indoor Classic. She set a European U20 record of 2:01.16 to triumph on her international debut at senior level, just 0.13 s off the world U20 record. She broke Kirsty Wade's long-standing British U20 record of 2:02.88 set in 1981, and Aníta Hinriksdóttir's European record for the age group set in 2015 by 0.4 seconds. Later that month, she went on to take the national senior 800 m title at the British Indoor Championships. At the end of August, she competed at the Göteborg GP in Sweden, recording a new personal best of 2:01.78. The 2020 season was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the 2020 Summer Olympics postponed until the following year. In September, Hodgkinson claimed the British outdoor title to become the youngest winner in the competition over 800 m since 1974. She improved her personal best again with a time 2:01.73, when ending her season with a fifth-place finish in Rovereto, Italy, three days later.
2021: Olympic silver medallist and Diamond League title In Vienna, Hodgkinson became the first British woman to set a world U20 record since Zola Budd 36 years previously. She won the 800 m for the second consecutive year with a time of 1:59.03. This marked the first time that she had completed the event in under two minutes, and also broke the world indoor U20 record. She shaved two seconds off the previous best set by Ethiopia's Meskerem Legesse in 2004. Hodgkinson competed at the 2021 European Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland. She became the second youngest British winner in the competition's history (after 400 m runner Marilyn Neufville in 1970), and also the youngest ever women's 800 m European indoor champion.
In May, Hodgkinson secured victory at the Golden Spike in Ostrava, Czechia, recording a sub-two minute mark outdoors for the first time after clocking 1:58.89. She broke by almost a second the UK junior record which had been held by Charlotte Moore. Her time was also the European junior record, beating Birte Bruhns' mark of 1:59.17 set in 1988. At the end of June, she secured a place in the British team for the Tokyo Olympics by defending her title at the 2021 British Athletics Championships. She overcame Laura Muir and Jemma Reekie to seal victory. A week later, she set a British U23 record by lowering her personal best to 1:57.51 when finishing fourth at the Stockholm Diamond League meet.
At the 2020 Summer Olympics, Hodgkinson won the silver medal behind the USA's Athing Mu, taking almost two seconds off her personal best with a time of 1:55.88. Hodgkinson also broke Kelly Holmes' 26-year-old British record of 1:56.21 in the race, as well as setting new European U20 and U23 records. After the race, Hodgkinson stated that the Olympics' postponement had benefitted her, saying: "If the Olympics had been last year I wouldn't have been here, but suddenly it's given me a year to grow and compete with these girls."
On the Diamond League circuit, Hodgkinson came second in Brussels, and ended the season with victory at the Zürich final in September, winning the Diamond League 800 m title.
Hodgkinson's early athletics career had been funded by her parents, but in 2020, she was not named by British Athletics as a recipient of £15,000 of lottery funding. Businessman Barrie Wells, who had previously helped fund 18 athletes to the 2012 London Olympics, stepped in and roughly matched the £15,000 a year that she had missed out on. This allowed Hodgkinson to attend warm-weather training in Florida. In October 2021, British Athletics announced that Hodgkinson would receive lottery funding.
2022: European champion and world silver medallist
At the beginning of the season, Hodgkinson revealed that she was targeting medals at the World Indoor Championships in March as well as three major outdoor championships in the summer: the World Championships, Commonwealth Games and the European Championships. Hodgkinson said: "It's definitely physically possible to do all four. Mentally, we'll see. The world outdoors is No 1 and I really want to do the Commonwealths, as it is a home Games. With the Europeans we'll see how the body and mind are coping."
Hodgkinson opened her athletics year on 19 February with the fastest indoor 800 m performance by a woman in 20 years with 1:57.20, at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix. It was the quickest mark since the precise day she was born, when the indoor world record was set by Jolanda Čeplak. Her time set a new British indoor record, the fastest ever mark by a teenager, and the sixth-fastest indoor mark of all time. In March, Hodgkinson travelled to the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. She suffered a quad injury during her warm-up for the event and was forced to withdraw.
On 21 May, Hodgkinson competed at the Diamond League event in Birmingham, claiming victory in the 800 m. She then had further success in the Diamond League, claiming victories in Eugene, and Oslo, as well as finishing runner-up behind Kenyan athlete Mary Moraa in Stockholm.
In the 800 m at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Hodgkinson claimed silver after finishing 0.08 s behind Mu. Hodgkinson recorded a season's best time of 1:56.38. Less than two weeks later, at the Commonwealth Games, she claimed another silver medal, this time finishing behind Moraa. Later in August, she secured her first major senior outdoor gold, winning the 800 m at the European Championships held in Munich in a time of 1:59.04. She finished half a second ahead of French athlete Rénelle Lamote who claimed silver.
In September, she finished in fifth place at the Zürich Diamond League final. Hodgkinson's time at the Birmingham indoor event earlier in the year made her the world leader for the season with a nearly 1.3-second advantage, while her result from the World Championships final ranked as the second quickest time for the year outdoors.
2023: World silver medallist again
In January, Hodgkinson set a new world indoor record time in the less frequently run distance of 600 metres with a time of 1:23.41 in Manchester. She eclipsed Olga Kotlyarova's record set in 2004 by 0.03 s. She then won three events on the World Indoor Tour in the 800 m category. She took victories in Toruń (meet record of 1:57.87), Liévin in France, and the Tour Final in Birmingham, where she improved her own British indoor record with 1:57.18. She concluded her indoor season with a successful defence of her European 800 m title at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Istanbul. She dedicated the win to her first coach in athletics, Joe Galvin, who had died a few days earlier, saying: "This one is definitely for him and everyone at home. He had a lot of belief in little 10-year-old me."