Team GB Olympics star Keely Hodgkinson is ready for a big 2025 after her coach revealed she has already bettered her 800m world-record time in training
Olympics star Keely Hodgkinson looks on course for a record-breaking 2025 – after her coach revealed she bettered the 800m world-record time in training.
Hodgkinson, newly crowned as Sports Personality of the Year, had a spectacular, unbeaten year in which she won gold at the Olympics and European Championships as well as breaking the British 800m record. Her next goal is improving her PB of 1min 54.61secs and breaking the long-standing world record of 1min 53.28secs, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of the Czech Republic in 1983.
And coach Trevor Painter is convinced the golden girl of British athletics can do it next year – revealing he expected her to break the record in the Paris final. Painter said: “In Paris she ran a 1min 52.7secs in training and the world record is 1min 53.28secs. So, we thought, if she’s half a second out she’ll still get it (in the final).
“But then things conspired and she was a bit tired. I’m confident it will happen at some point. Will it happen next year? We don’t know but we’ll give it a shot and try our best to get it at some point.”
Painter and his wife, ex-GB runner Jenny Meadows, also coach Georgia Bell and Lewis Davey who both won bronze medals at the Paris 2024 Games.
Their training group have just returned from warm-weather training in South Africa and will step up their plans for the new season in chillier conditions – including tackling the sand dunes at Formby, Merseyside.
The brutal method has been used for years by Painter, who suggested it to seven-time Super League champions Wigan Warriors.
“Keely hates Formby sand dunes, but even I was doing it when I was an athlete,” said the 2024 World Athletics Coach of the Year. I took a Wigan group up, I showed them the dunes and made them all puke up – it was vile!”