by Keely Hodgkinson’s path to celebrity has started young and will likely experience many other moments in coming gold.
The 22 -year -old woman continued her brilliant Olympic title over 800 meters in Paris this summer by winning the Sports Personality Prize for the BBC year on Tuesday evening.
The demonstration of Hodgkinson’s domination at the Stade de France was the most watched event of the games on terrestrial television and she also led to the fourth consecutive woman to win the coveted Gong of the BBC.
This is the year when the atherton athlete in the Grand Manchester has established itself as the best in the world in its ordeal in the face of a solid peloton.
Hodgkinson won her nine 800 m races this year and her 54.61 second minute time, made during the Diamond League meeting in London in July, made her the sixth fastest woman of the ‘ history.
His athletic talent was obvious from an early age, Hodgkinson joining Leigh Harriers at the age of nine and, inspired by the Olympic victory of Jessica Ennis-Hill at the heptathlon in 2012, soon winning races in his region.
At 16, she became European champion under 18, while at 17, she won her first senior national title at the British indoor championships.
She added the title outdoors later in 2020, then the following year, Hodgkinson broke into the dominant current with a series of prodigious performance.
She first broke two minutes for the first time to establish a world record for under 20, the first made by a Briton in 36 years, before becoming European indoor champion.
Hodgkinson was the youngest winner of the 800m during the event in Poland, which marked its international senior debut.
That summer, she made her Olympic debut and won the silver medal, the air shocked on her face being one of the images of the games.
Still a teenager, Hodgkinson’s time of 1 min 55.88 seconds broke the British record of Lady Kelly Holmes.
Even if this silver medal was a triumph, it has become a color of frustration for Hodgkinson.
She finished second at the world championships in 2022 and 2023, as well as to the Commonwealth Games in 2022, her athing MU rivals and Mary Moraa conspired to keep her out of the highest step of the podium.
She remained unbeatable at European level both indoors and outdoors, but she did not hide that gold in Paris was the one she wanted.
The fact that Hodgkinson not only accepted the title of favorite, but that she adopted it, marking his authority on the race of the first in the last stage, distinguished her as one of the best in Great Britain .
And Hodgkinson is still in the early stages of his career, with many other historic opportunities to come.
Next year, she will try to succeed in her third participation in the world championships, while breaking the world record for Jarmila Kratochvilova, established since 1983.
