In the very beginning, every kid runs for fun. But if you stick at it, then soon enough you need another reason. Everyone of the eight women in the Olympic 800m final had their own. For the USA’s Juliette Whitaker, it was because her parents were track athletes themselves; for France’s Rénelle Lamote, it was because her PE teacher made her do it; for Kenya’s Mary Moraa, it was simply how she got to school and back again; and for Keely Hodgkinson, born in Atherton, it was simply that she wanted to do whatever she could best win at.
Hodgkinson would have been a swimmer, and a good one, if her parents hadn’t persuaded her that she would have a better chance as a runner. It was all the reason she needed to switch.
Seven minutes before the start of the final, the camera in the call room picked out Hodgkinson as she sat with the other runners waiting to be brought out on to the track. Her great rival Moraa, who won at the world championships last year, was bristling, in the background, striding up, down and all around, trying to do something with her energy. But Hodgkinson wasn’t even blinking. She stayed absolutely motionless, eyes fixed, jaw clenched, mouth turned down, apparently oblivious to the roars of the 70,000 people waiting in the stadium beyond the door. She was thinking about the same thing she always does before she races. Winning.
Hodgkinson has been thinking about this race since she was a 10-year-old girl watching Jess Ennis-Hill win the heptathlon on TV during London 2012. She was a little out of love with sport at the time, but that got her right back into it. And of course she’s already been here once before, three years ago, when, only 19, she came from nowhere to win the silver behind the USA’s own 19-year-old phenom Athing Mu in Tokyo. Hodgkinson was so excited at the time that she didn’t sleep for the next two nights because of all the adrenaline she had in her system. It hardly even seemed like a defeat.
But over time the high began to wear off. Silver wasn’t what she wanted. Never had been.
A year later, she raced Mu again, in the world championships in Eugene. This time, Hodgkinson and her coach Trevor Painter had a plan. She shadowed Mu right through the first 600m, then tried to undertake her as Mu drifted wide into the second lane coming around the final bend. The two were shoulder-to-shoulder for a stretch of the home straight, but Mu was just a little too strong, and her stride a little too long, for Hodgkinson to do it. She was second again. But this time the gap between them was down to just eight-hundredths of a second.
Only, it wasn’t just Mu that Hodgkinson needed to beat any more. Moraa, who was 24 in June, had only just moved up from the 400m after being persuaded it would make sense by her friend and mentor, Hellen Obiri. Moraa had been right there on Mu’s shoulder during that race in Eugene, too. Hodgkinson had to fight by her to get into second place. And a fortnight later, it was Moraa who caught Hodgkinson in the final 25m after she had tried to front run the Commonwealth Games final in Birmingham.
All of a sudden, the women’s 800m had become a three-way competition. At the world championships in Budapest a year later, the trio, all born within two years of each other, came into the home straight together, Mu out front, Moraa on one shoulder, Hodgkinson on the other, inside, trying the same sort of undertaking strategy that had so nearly worked for a year earlier. And this time she did get by Mu. Problem was that Moraa, who was running wide in the second lane, had kicked on ahead of both of them and won by three-tenths of a second.
So, four years into her senior career, Hodgkinson had run in four major finals, and won four silver medals. She had come second just about every way a runner can. And she was sick of it.
Moraa was just about the only woman in that room who had a real chance of beating Hodgkinson in Paris. The six other women in the final simply didn’t have the kind of times Hodgkinson has been turning out this season, when she’s risen high into the event’s all-time top 10. And Mu didn’t make it to the Games – she tripped and fell at the US trials, and hard as she tried, couldn’t find her way back into the race. Hodgkinson said she felt gutted for Mu at the time, but she seemed to be wearing a pretty big smile for someone who was talking about how upset she felt.
This time, Hodgkinson took the lead 200m into the race, exactly as she had planned. This time, Moraa was right there behind her, but Hodgkinson didn’t let her get up shoulder-to-shoulder. Instead, she pressed on once, coming into the last bend, and then pressed on again coming out of it. She pulled clear down the straight and ran in alone, fresh air between her and the Ethiopian Tsige Duguma, who had overtaken Moraa as she slipped back into the pack trying, and failing, to break into a sprint that would catch Hodgkinson.
It took Hodgkinson thousands of hours to make it to that finish line, and thousands of miles, and a fair few defeats. And in the end she made winning look so very easy that you only wondered how she ever found it so hard to begin with.
