Keely Hodgkinson set a new British indoor 800m record at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham, recording a time of 1:57.20 and beating Jemma Reekie’s previous record time of 1:57.91, set in 2020.
In her first race of the year, Hodgkinson tracked the pacemaker expertly, crossing the halfway point in 58.58, before throwing down the hammer to finish in the fastest ever indoor performance by a teenager. The result puts her at sixth in the world indoor all-time rankings.
The 800m Olympic silver medallist, who’s currently at Leeds Beckett University, was racing for the first time since her September Diamond League win. Afterwards, she told World Athletics, ‘I really wanted to try and front run. I haven’t done that in such a long time, so I wanted to get confident with that. I did what I knew I had been doing in training and just ran the race.
‘I was annoyed because I stumbled a bit on the last corner and I feel like that might have cost me a tenth of a second, but we’ll just correct that next time and hope I can go quicker. But I’m really happy with that race.’
This year is set to be a huge 12 months for the Atherton athlete, with upcoming targets including the World Championships in Oregon in July, the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and August’s European Championships in Munich.
