Hodgkinson to headline women's 800m showdown at Birmingham European Championships
Keely Hodgkinson will lead a high-profile women's 800m clash at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham this week, with the final scheduled for Friday night (9.45pm).
The championships at Alexander Stadium feature a large entry list that includes world and Olympic champions Mondo Duplantis, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Yaroslava Mahuchikh, and prominent British contenders such as Amy Hunt, Matt Hudson-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson, with significant broadcast support from the BBC.
Organisers have produced a packed timetable: Hodgkinson begins the defence of her women’s 800m title (12.05pm) and is also due to run in the semi-finals (12:10pm). Amy Hunt is a warm favourite for the women’s 100m (9.50pm) and is listed among favourites for the women's 200m (9.50pm). The men’s 100m is a major evening event (9.45pm) where Marcel Jacobs is the favourite and Romell Glave is named as his closest challenger; Jakob Ingebrigtsen returns in the men’s 5,000m (8.40pm) and a mixed 4x400m final is set for 9.40pm.
The women’s 800m field centres on Hodgkinson, Audrey Werro and Femke Broeders-Bol. Werro beat Hodgkinson in Stockholm in June and recorded 1min 53.98sec there, while Hodgkinson posted a personal best of 1:54.33 in that race. Werro has produced three of the season’s fastest times — the third, fourth and ninth fastest in history this summer — and Broeders-Bol is competing over 800m after previously being a 400m hurdles world champion.
Hodgkinson, described in the coverage as the Paris 800m Olympic champion and an 11-time major medallist, predicted the 800m would be the “race of the championships.” She stressed the different dynamics of championship racing: “Going to championships is completely different,” she says. “This is what I love about them. I’ve gone into them ranked eighth in the Olympics in Tokyo and came out with a silver; I’ve gone in as favourite and not won. You can maybe try to predict what others are going to do but ultimately you don’t know. And that’s the beauty of the 800m, you sometimes have to think on your feet.”
Reflecting on the Stockholm meeting, Hodgkinson said: “I don’t really think I did anything wrong in that race. I didn’t know what she was capable of at that point. I think that just shows you can’t underestimate anybody. If you look at all our other head-to-heads, you wouldn’t have thought she was going to hang on.” She added: “It was my opening race. I think people are trying to make me feel like it was a failure and it really wasn’t. That was a British record. It was my fastest time ever and I’m going to remind myself of that because I’m proud of that.” The Stockholm result is cited in coverage as a key current form line.
Off the track, Hodgkinson addressed social media and recent setbacks while confirming her fitness after a late-June knee problem caused by tripping on a metal grate. “I think anyone I’ve ever bumped into has been very nice and supportive, which is always really great,” she says. “But as the sport grows and the athletes grow you are subjected to more opinions and it can be frustrating at times. You’ve just got to let that go. Sometimes I delete Twitter and just focus on what I have to do.” She recalled a TikTok anecdote with training partner Georgia Hunter Bell: “Me and Georgia were laughing the other day because we saw a TikTok, and it was like: ‘Georgia pays Keely 200k to not do the Commonwealth Games.’ I thought well I didn’t get that money so where the fuck’s it going? But I don’t know. People make up stuff. We just laugh about it. But it’s a strange world we live in sometimes.” On recovery she said: “I had a tricky few weeks but it’s really good. Honestly I just think it’s really good. Audrey’s come on really well, Femke’s running well. We’ll just see what happens.”
Hodgkinson also reflected on the role of experience in championship racing: “I think experience can be both a positive and a negative thing. I think it can sometimes allow you to overthink, because it’s like, ‘I’ve done it this way’. So I just like to go back to basics. “When I was young, I didn’t care. I had nothing to lose and I think it’s important to me that I hold on to that and I just race with courage and fearlessness. That’s how I get the best out of myself.” Whatever the outcome, coverage notes Hodgkinson will be supported by a sellout crowd in Birmingham.
The immediate next test is clear: the women’s 800m final is scheduled for Friday night at 9.45pm, when Hodgkinson will face Werro, Broeders-Bol and the rest of the field.