Keely Hodgkinson: the making of a champion

We find out more about the training environment that took the British 800m runner to the top of the Olympic podium and discover just how much work goes into a gold medal

Keely Hodgkinson had just had her podium moment when she stopped to talk to the waiting press in the bowels of the Stade de France. A recurring theme of the questions that immediately followed her victory in the women’s 800m Olympic final had been how she was planning to reward herself after the race of her life. There was talk of Louis Vuitton bags, maybe a new car, some jewellery to commemorate the occasion.

The most valuable prize, however, was the one that hung around her neck. There was a decidedly golden glow to the 22-year-old of whom so much was expected in Paris.

To the casual observer, that she rose to meet those expectations was impressive enough, but only those who know her best are aware of just how just how deep she had to dig to turn that Olympic ambition into reality.

With the job done and smiling for the cameras, from the outside it would be easy to think of Hodgkinson’s path towards success as a straight, steadily rising, line. As is so often the case with elite sport, though, the reality is often starkly different. The glittering prizes don’t usually arrive without the need to visit some dark places.

In fact, her training partners and her coaches at the Manchester-based M11 Track Club that is overseen by Trevor Painter and his wife Jenny Meadows, herself once a top-class 800m athlete, are full of admiration for just how much of a hole the British record-holder pulled herself out of at the start of this year to claw her way back to the top.

AW sat down with Meadows, plus M11 members Erin Wallace, Ava Lloyd and Charlie Hobson to get a sense of what life is like as part of a group that is gaining a reputation for producing success. That feeling was further enhanced by the Olympic bronze medals for Team GB that were won by Georgia Bell in the women’s 1500m and Lewis Davey in the men’s 4x400m relay.

Keely Hodgkinson with training partners (Getty)

It’s Hodgkinson who has risen highest from the group, so far, but there have been times when the bubble has well and truly burst along the way. While there is now a lengthy 2024 highlights reel to flick through that includes her winning the Prefontaine Classic, defying illness to win the European title, breaking the British record at the London Diamond League meeting and then seizing the sport’s biggest prize in France, it’s to a hill in Potchefstroom, South Africa, that Meadows’ mind tends to wander when it comes to this year’s landmark moments.

That was the location for Hodgkinson’s first session of the year, back in January. She was returning to running at the warm weather training camp after tears to a knee ligament and tendon, which extended into her hamstring, had kept her on the sidelines. “She was fit but not running fit,” says Meadows. Hodgkinson was not in rude health, either, but still no-one was expecting what was about to happen.

“We can laugh and joke about this now but, in January, there was a point where we worried: ‘Is she going to be in Paris?’. “There’s a particular hill session that comes to mind. I’ve known Keely for five years now and I never thought she could be so bad! Erin was destroying her on the hill.”

Wallace, a European under-18 and under-23 medallist who achieved the Olympic 800m qualifying standard this summer, concurs. “That was a bit crazy,” she says. “I’ve never seen Keely struggle that much before. I didn’t know that she could be that far behind me. I was laughing with her about it because it was so bad. I couldn’t believe it even happened.”

Erin Wallace (Paul Forrest)

“She was unwell and she’d been injured,” adds Meadows. “The session was to run up the hill for 200m then jog back for 100m and do it again so with every rep you’re getting further up the hill. I was having to time the people at the top of the hill and then Keely. [It got to the stage where] I could hardly see Keely at the bottom and I had to stop timing her and concentrate on the rest of the group.

“But there is something quite powerful about seeing that someone isn’t just naturally talented and that it’s [always] easy. There is something inspiring about seeing her battle.

Some people choose to go through the battle and some people don’t.”

Did the fact that the big name was struggling, that the natural order of things was being disrupted, send unsettling ripples through the group? Not as much as you might think. Not at all, actually.

“It cements that idea that we’re all one big training group,” says the 19-year-old Lloyd who, at the time of writing, was making her final preparations to compete for Great Britain at the World Under-20 Championships in Lima.

Ava Lloyd (England Athletics/Pat Scaasi)

“It’s not always the same person at the front. Everyone uses each other. I’m not going to lie, if someone’s having a bad day you don’t really wait behind them, you try your best to come past them.

“Everyone has little boosts at times but then everyone can have off-days and it’s a hard group to have an off-day in. That can be quite traumatic at times. But I think the fact that everyone has good days and bad days means that you just drive each other along, no matter what.

“Keely still got the session done, at the end of the day, even though she was in that  state. There was another session on the same camp, and I think it was during the same week, and she was struggling on that one as well. I was struggling, too, and we were both at the back together. She was like: ‘We’ll just get this done, Ava’. If she hadn’t said that to me I wouldn’t have got through that session. It was really horrible and I was fighting for my life.”

Not all of the group have seen Hodgkinson at her lowest ebb, though. “I’m disappointed I missed that session!” laughs Hobson. The 21-year-old was in Paris, assigned the holding camp task in the days leading up to the Olympics of pacing Hodgkinson’s training efforts. He is accustomed to being hunted down.

“I’ve never witnessed a session where she’s struggling because the last rep always seems to be what she enjoys the most,” he says. “She just gets there. Even if she’s in a dark place, it feels like she could do as many reps as she wants.

“Before the Olympics we did a session of three times 300m and we were going so fast. On the last one, in the closing 50m, Keely just steamed it. We know she’s going to come at the end. It’s just scripted.”

Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)

After second-place finishes at the Tokyo Olympics, the World Championships of 2022 and 2023, plus the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, finally the script was written for Hodgkinson to come out on top.

Her star had already been on the rise but victory in Paris has taken her public profile further up a notch or two. If the success is going to her head, then she certainly isn’t showing it in front of her training partners, though. When she arrived for her first post-Olympics session with the group recently, there was a hint of embarrassment and almost a fear of any fuss being made.

“She looked a bit sheepish,” smiles Wallace. “I actually didn’t really know what to say to her. ‘Well done’ feels like it doesn’t really cut it.

“I’ve never known someone personally who has won the Olympics. When I was younger, people like Jess Ennis were celebrities to me but now one of my friends has just won the Olympics. But I think of her as my friend first and the Olympic champion second.

“Actually, I think the first thing I said to her was how much I liked her nails.”

Keely Hodgkinson and Trevor Painter (Getty)

“She wants to just be Keely at training,” says Meadows. “Training is her safe place. When she came along for that first session, I said to Trevor: ‘Do you think we should do a guard of honour or something when she walks in?’ and he said: ‘No, she’ll hate it’. She just wants Erin to tell her that she has nice nails.

“It wasn’t until the end of the session that we found out she had her medal with her and she was all apologetic, like: ‘I didn’t want to presume you all wanted to see it’.

“Keely is a celebrity to some people but we don’t see it and she doesn’t see it. She doesn’t ever want to think that we would think of her as that.

“We’re her friends, we’re her training group and we’ve got to keep her on the ground. Ava’s got to be beating her up that hill in South Africa again in January.”

READ MORE: Keely savours golden moment

A blunt comment from Hobson cuts further through any pretence.

“Sometimes we forget she’s famous,” he says. “If we go to the track and there are a few kids around and they ask for a picture it’s like: ‘Oh yeah, I forgot you were famous’.”

Hodgkinson’s effect on those around her is still profound, though. Ask her training partners about the biggest lesson they’ve learned from watching and working with her and three very considered answers come back.

“Her mental ability,” says Hobson. “She can put herself in dark places but still be confident that she’ll come through strongly at the end. I feel like this year she’s really thrived under the pressure. In the sessions before the Olympics she kept saying ‘pressure is a privilege’. It’s definitely weighed on her but I think it’s definitely helped her as well.

“For me, at the holding camp there was a bit more pressure because obviously it was her dream to get a gold medal and I didn’t want to mess any timings up or get in the way or anything like that. I didn’t do that, though, so it was alright!

“I felt proud that she won. It felt like I’d won. Everyone was buying me a drink and saying well done.”

Jenny Meadows with Trevor Painter and Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)

Wallace adds: “I was feeling the pressure on Keely before the Olympics. I can’t imagine how that must have felt for her but she did seem to just thrive on it and it was impressive. It’s good to see that it’s possible to deal with things like that.”

The last word goes to Lloyd. “The main thing for me is that not everything has to be perfect,” she says. “You don’t have to come to every session and train like you’re the best in the world because sometimes that’s just not the case. What you stack up over the entire year towards that end goal is what really matters – not turning up every day and running world records. That’s really important to remember.”

READ MORE: Why Keely’s sand dune sessions could work for you

The M11 group has a WhatsApp chat that lights up any time one of their number does well. Given the recipe for success they have uncovered in the North West of England, it looks the like messages will be pouring in for the foreseeable future.

» This article first appeared in the September issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here

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