Hodgkinson smashes women's indoor 800m world record

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Keely Hodgkinson has won 10 international medalsGetty Images

ByHarry Poole
BBC Sport journalist
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Keely Hodgkinson has broken the long-standing women's indoor 800m world record, set by Slovenia's Jolanda Ceplak on the day the Briton was born almost 24 years ago.

Olympic champion Hodgkinson crossed the line in one minute 54.87 seconds in Lievin, France, taking almost one second off Ceplak's time of 1:55.82 which had endured since 3 March 2002.

"Thank god. That was really fun, I was really looking forward to this," Hodgkinson told the crowd, before being adorned with a golden tiara as she took her place on a throne beside the track.

The 23-year-old, who broke the rarely contested 600m record during her previous indoor season three years ago, joins triple jumper Jonathan Edwards as the only British athlete to hold a current world record in one of the sport's championship events.

Hodgkinson was primed to target the indoor 800m record at her eponymous Keely Klassic event in February last year, before her ambitions were ruined by the first of two serious hamstring injuries that season.

Speaking before Thursday's event, Hodgkinson said that Lievin was not just about the world record "but seeing how fast we can really go", after bettering her own national record by almost one second at the UK Indoor Championships on Saturday.

Joined on the start line by Ethiopia's Olympic silver medallist Tsige Duguma and Switzerland's Audrey Werro, who Hodgkinson replaced as the fastest woman this year, Poland's Anna Gryc was tasked with setting a pace of 55.8 seconds through halfway.

Ahead of schedule after a 55.56-second first 400m, Hodgkinson strode off the front and never appeared in danger of losing touch with the green wavelights representing the record time on the inside of the track.

'My record to break'

After the desperate lows of her first year as the reigning Olympic champion, Hodgkinson has come out firing in her second.

The world record appeared to be on borrowed time after Hodgkinson opened her season with a 1:56.33 clocking in Birmingham five days ago.

She made no secret of her ambition to surpass Ceplak's mark on a notoriously fast track in Lievin following that statement performance, saying: "I feel like it is my record to break."

It left Ceplak and Austrian Stephanie Graf, who set her best time in finishing runner-up to Ceplak's world record run in Vienna, as the only athletes ahead of Hodgkinson on the all-time list.

That mark had remained a controversial one ever since Ceplak, and indeed Graf, later served two-year doping bans.

But, 12 days short of her birthday, and the latest anniversary of Ceplak's record, Hodgkinson took down the record to which she has long attached a sense of destiny.

Can Keely 2.0 bring down athletics' oldest record?

Hodgkinson became known as 'Keely 2.0' among her M11 training group, such were the developments she made in strength and power during her time spent in the gym recovering from two hamstring tears in 2025.

Those significant setbacks, though challenging both physically and emotionally, did not prevent her from making the world podium in September following a 376-day wait to race as Olympic champion.

With an uninterrupted winter training block behind her - the "healthiest" she says she has had "in a long time" - Hodgkinson signalled in devastating fashion that she is ready to make up for lost time.

After she won BBC Sport's Personality of the Year following her crowning moment at Paris 2024, Jenny Meadows, co-coach of the M11 training group alongside husband Trevor Painter, said an attempt at the sport's oldest world record would naturally follow once the indoor best was captured.

It is close to 43 years since Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova set the outright world 800m record by running 1:53.28 in July 1983.

On this evidence, it may not be long before Hodgkinson, who has world indoor, European and Commonwealth honours to target this year, writes further history.

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