At 4am this morning Paris time, Keely Hodgkinson had the first moment to herself since being crowned Olympic 800m champion.
She marked the occasion by unlocking her phone and watching back the race for the first time. Despite the golden finish, her damning assessment was that “it wasn’t actually one of my finest”, but that was immaterial.
It was a 12th Olympic gold medal for Team GB of these Games and a first from a star-studded track and field team of which she is arguably its head.
When done with her media duties and anti-doping, she joined the throng of Hodgkinsons, who have been here in the French capital, in a bar she neither remembers the name of nor recalls its location.
And that had nothing to do with the fact the 22-year-old had gone a little too crazy in celebrating, admitting she merely had “a little cheeky one” but no more as the tiredness and comedown of such an occasion kicked in.
Having finally fallen asleep at 4.30am, sleep has been in short supply — about 90 minutes in all she estimated last night — ahead of a day full of back-to-back interviews following her win. Her parents were already packing up this morning and heading to a holiday in Marbella, with their daughter set to join them in due course for a few days to finally unwind.
Her biggest post-gold desire, she said was simply to spend time with family whom she has been able to see rarely during a busy season.
As for her other post-race plans, she had said beforehand she wanted to splash out on a Porsche with the $50,000 (£39,000) prize money from World Athletics for winning gold. In the cold light of day, she worried whether she would be able to get insured on a vehicle like that at such an age.
A three-time silver medallist at the global stage at the last Olympics and the past two World Championships, she afterwards decried “never again”, and she has dominated this distance all season long. She had previously treated herself to a silver Cartier ring, partly as a celebration of that success but also as a constant reminder in training and competition that it needed converting to gold. This time her immediate plan post-Paris is to go for the same ring in gold to stack on top in a nod to her latest on-track achievement.
In terms of more immediate gratification, it will take the form of chocolate and cake, having been confined to avocado brownies and healthy treats by the Team GB chefs.
Speaking on the BBC after the win, achieved in a time of 1min 56.72sec, Paula Radcliffe suggested the floodgates would now open for Hodgkinson, having finally turned silver to gold on the track.
Meanwhile, Jenny Meadows, one half of her husband-wife coaching team, said remaining at the top for the next two Olympics was a realistic ambition.
Hodgkinson said: “Yeah, hopefully. I don’t know what can happen. I’d love to be a four-time Olympian and bring home medals for everyone.”
Among the track targets next, the 41-year-old 800m world record of 1:53.28 set by Jarmila Kratochvilova is one, so too converting her two world silvers into gold next year in Tokyo, aptly where she won a first global medal, Olympic silver.
“I don’t have a World Championships gold, so there’s something missing,” she said. “I’d like to go back to Tokyo, go back to where it all began and try to get a gold medal there. And the way technology is going, we’ll take a look at the world record and how close we’ll get.”
The messages of congratulations were coming in thick and fast this morning, and her post-race promise of getting back to each and every one of them was looking harder and harder to achieve.
Among the more noticeable and meaningful messages to come was from England footballer Ella Toone, a European champion and World Cup runner-up. The pair went to the same school together and are good friends.
“Ella sent a video across very quickly that I managed to watch,” said Hodgkinson. “She’s been supporting me a long time. Our school has a great history of producing great athletes. I’m just happy to join her.”
