So dominant has Keely Hodgkinson become over 800 metres that it would be easy enough almost to overlook her latest victory on the circuit. Another race, another win, another outright annihilation of the world’s best and another step on her unrelenting march towards Olympic gold in Paris next month.
This 1min 54.61sec triumph – the fastest of her life – at the London Diamond League only cemented her status as one of the hottest gold-medal favourites in the entire Olympic athletics programme. Not since 2018 – and the era of double Olympic champion Caster Semenya – has anyone run an 800m so fast. Indeed, only two other athletes since the murky days of the 1980s have ever run quicker than Hodgkinson did in London on Saturday.
At the age of just 22, she is rapidly venturing into the type of conversation that few thought possible; the kind where people start wondering whether a previously untouchable 1.53:28 world record that has stood since 1983 could soon fall. Are we witnessing the evolution of an athlete who could become the fastest female 800m runner ever?
“We’re getting closer,” said Hodgkinson, when asked about the possibility of surpassing Jarmila Kratochvilova’s world record mark. “Do I think it’s beatable? Now, I would say yes.
“It would take a very special race. But [today] happened. And hopefully I will have a long time to try. So yeah, I think it’s definitely possible.”