Keely Hodgkinson was edged out of a gold in a thrilling 800metre final to fellow 20-year-old Athing Mu at the World Athletics Championships.
It was a repeat result of the Olympic final last summer but this time Hodgkinson was just eight hundredths of a second behind as the pair went toe to toe to the line.
Mu bizarrely went wide going round the bend to open a gap for her British rival, who tried to elbow her way through to the lead but the American had just enough to hold on for the gold.
Combined with a bronze medal in the women’s 4x400m, it took Britain’s medal tally to seven in Eugene in a step-up from Tokyo.
Afterwards, Hodgkinson said: “I’m satisfied but not overjoyed. I’m a little disappointed that I missed out on gold by 0.08 which is the tiny margins that I’ve worked so hard to close but I’ll take the positives. I’ve closed the gap, I’m getting close. I’ll take the silver and assess it.
“But it shows how far I’ve come. I’m not overly disappointed because to be in a world final is one thing, to win a silver medal is another. I came here to race for the gold but unfortunately I didn’t get it.
“My goal in my career is to try and medal at every single championships. I’m keeping the ball rolling so I’m happy about that.”
Hodgkinson has the opportunity to do that again at her home Commonwealth Games which get under way in Birmingham later this week.
“I go a week tomorrow in the heats at the Commonwealth Games,” she said after her final, “so I need to get back and get over the jetlag, reset and refocus. I can’t dwell on this too much. It would be nice to get a medal in front of a home crowd and then go into the Europeans trying to do the same thing.”
It meant Britain ended the championships with just one gold after Jake Wightman’s brilliant run in the 1500m last week but it was the first time that GB had as many as five different medallists at a World Championships since 2011.
The medal haul was rounded off by the quartet of Victoria Ohuruogu, Nicole Yeargin, Jessie Knight and Laviai Nielsen as they took the bronze behind gold medallists the United States and Jamaica in second.
Going into the final leg, Nielsen said: “It was exciting. I kept thinking ‘I can’t believe we’re in bronze, I can’t believe we’re in bronze. We knew we could do it.”
Hopes of further medals in the women’s 100m hurdles or long jump were dashed. Cindy Sember had broken her sister Tiffany Porter’s British record in the semi-finals of the hurdles but was edged out in fifth place come the final. In the long jump, teammates Jazmin Sawyers and Lorraine Ugen were ninth and 10th respectively.
On the final day of athletics competition, Mondo Duplantis increased his pole vault world record for a fifth time with a clearance of 6.21metres to take a first world title.
