by Keely Hodgkinson’s path to stardom started young and will likely have many more golden moments to come.
The 22-year-old followed up her brilliant 800m Olympic title in Paris this summer by winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award on Tuesday night.
Hodgkinson’s display of dominance at the Stade de France was the most-watched event of the Games on terrestrial television and she also led from the front to become the fourth woman in a row to win the coveted BBC gong.
It was the year the athlete from Atherton in Greater Manchester established herself as the best in the world in her event against a strong field.
Hodgkinson has won all nine of her 800m races this year and her time of one minute 54.61 seconds, set at the Diamond League meeting in London in July, made her the sixth fastest woman in the world. history.
Her athletic talent was evident from a young age, with Hodgkinson joining Leigh Harriers at the age of nine and, inspired by Jessica Ennis-Hill’s Olympic heptathlon victory in 2012, soon winning races in her local area.
At 16 she became European Under-18 champion, while at 17 she won her first senior national title at the British Indoor Championships.
She added the outdoor title later in 2020, then the following year Hodgkinson burst into the mainstream with a series of prodigious performances.
She first broke two minutes for the first time to set an under-20 world record, the first by a British woman in 36 years, before becoming European indoor champion.
Hodgkinson was the youngest winner of the 800m at the event in Poland, which marked her senior international debut.
That summer, she made her Olympic debut and won the silver medal, the look of shock on her face being one of the images of the Games.
Still a teenager, Hodgkinson’s time of 1 min 55.88 seconds broke Dame Kelly Holmes’ British record.
Although this silver medal was a triumph, it became a color of frustration for Hodgkinson.
She finished second at the World Championships in 2022 and 2023, as well as the 2022 Commonwealth Games, with rivals Athing Mu and Mary Moraa conspiring to keep her off the top step of the podium.
She remained unbeatable at European level both indoors and outdoors, but she made no secret that gold in Paris was what she wanted.
The fact that Hodgkinson not only accepted the title of favourite, but embraced it, marking her authority over the race from the first to the last stage, distinguished her as one of Britain’s best .
And Hodgkinson is still in the early stages of his career, with many more historic opportunities to come.
Next year, she will attempt to make her third appearance at the World Championships, while breaking Jarmila Kratochvilova’s world record, set since 1983.
