The Olympic 800m champion donned the striking black outfit – featuring an open back and designed gap for her trademark blonde ponytail – in London last week
Keely Hodgkinson’s skintight running suit is here to stay because it could boost her performance by up to 25%, experts say.
The Olympic 800m champion donned the striking black outfit – featuring an open back and designed gap for her trademark blonde ponytail – in London last week. It helped the 24-year-old run within two seconds of her personal best to claim victory.
And the world indoor champion is unlikely to take it off after experts said its aerodynamics make it a winner. Bert Blocken, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and LUT University in Finland, is convinced it will be a game-changer.
“This could really be running history,” he said. Blocken said he was surprised it had taken so long to work out athletes will perform better in aerodynamic suits – particularly as gear and helmets have proved crucial in cycling for years.
His 2024 study – published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics – ruled the introduction of ‘hair caps and low-drag clothing’ for long jumpers would ‘reduce aerodynamic resistance and level the playing field’.
According to Bert’s calculations such suits could save potentially crucial hundredths of seconds in sprint events, rising to seconds in longer distance races. That could change sporting history with just 0.03 seconds deciding the men’s marathon at the 2025 World Championships.
The top three in the 10,000m were separated by just 0.25 seconds. Blocken said differences in clothing and hairstyle can ‘easily’ make drag increase by 10% and ‘sometimes more’.
His findings have been validated by performance data from elite athletes. Bert said he would not be surprised if Hodgkinson’s new speedsuit made a difference of between 10% and 25%.
That could save her between 0.206 seconds and 0.514 seconds in an 800m race. “Anything can happen now,” he said. “The interest in the aerodynamics of athletics so far has been very limited.
“It makes no sense at all but it also took quite some years to convince cyclists to wear helmets. It is definitely the way of the future.”
Athletics chiefs hope to make similar suits available to Team GB competitors at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. But they will have to be made by Adidas – which crafts GB athletes’ gear. Keely’s was made by Nike.
She said: “This has been a year in the making. It was really fun and it’s something I’ll remember forever. It’s a mixture of fashion, speed and science all coming together, for maybe the future of athletics.”