Keely Hodgkinson has revealed she stepped away from athletics as a child after falling out of love with running. Hodgkinson is currently one of British athletics' best-known and most successful stars.
She won a silver medal in the 800 metres at the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics, aged 19, before going one better and clinching gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The 24-year-old is also a two-time European Athletics Championships winner and won the World Indoor Championships earlier this year.
Record-breaking career
Hodgkinson is a world record holder over 800m indoors and the British record holder over the 800m outdoors, as well as a four-time national champion. As one of the greatest middle-distance runners of her generation, it is easy to assume the Mancunian has had her heart set on being a track athlete for her entire life.
However, the Team GB star revealed in a Sky Sports interview last week that she didn't enjoy it as a schoolgirl and actually stopped training altogether for a while. Having briefly given up the sport, she was encouraged to make a U-turn by seeing Jessica Ennis-Hill's heroics at the 2012 London Olympics.
Inspired by Ennis-Hill
Hodgkinson, inspired by London gold medallist Ennis-Hill, decided aged 10 that she wanted to be a heptathlete. She then transitioned to what she calls the most difficult part of the heptathlon - the 800m - and won her first gold medal at the England Championships in the U17 category back in 2017.
She began by saying: "I love the life that I've created with this. If you'd said to me six years ago that I'd be able to do all of this just because you run around in circles, it's actually kind of insane."
But Hodgkinson, who was also a big swimmer as a child, went on to admit: "During that time, I actually didn't like athletics that much. I was really young so it didn't matter but I kind of stepped away from it.
"I remember my dad saying, 'You're really good at the running', and I'd be like, 'I don't want to do it. It's hard.' I didn't enjoy it.
"Then I remember seeing Jessica Ennis at the London Olympics, the golden girl at the time, and she really did inspire me to go back.
"My coach back then was very happy to see me come back and I kind of had a love-hate relationship with it for a few years, until I found my feet and what I wanted to do. Then I stuck with it from there."
Road to the Olympics
Hodgkinson admitted she didn't think about making the Olympics until much later. The Team GB sensation said: "I won that national title and I thought we have the European Youths next year. It was my last year at school and I thought, 'I really want to make that team'.
"I made the team and I ended up winning it. So after I established myself as one of the best in Europe for my age, which was really cool, I kind of progressed from there and before you know it I was in the Olympics."
