Olympic golden girl Keely Hodgkinson has had a year plagued by injury and professional disappointment but she says she’s prouder than ever after learning how to handle the setbacks
It’s been a difficult year but becoming more spiritual has helped Mancunian Keely, 23, to take problems – including her hamstring tear and subsequent setbacks – in her stride.
The middle distance runner says: “This last year has been the most insane year of my life I would say – in every way possible, like personally, on and off the track.
“I had a lot of growth. I feel like a different person. Even though there’s been a lot of troubles and hardship. I’ve cried a lot this year – but I’ve also laughed just as much.
“One good thing would happen, like I went to get my MBE. Two days later I pulled my hamstring – out for the season.”
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She continues: “This is probably the first year I can look back – it sounds insane – where I actually feel proud of myself. Against all odds I kept pursuing, I kept pushing through. I think I’ve maybe just got a deeper understanding of life.”
Keely’s “more chilled” approach meant that, after achieving a bronze medal – a comedown from her 2024 Olympic gold – at last month’s World Championships, instead of wasting time brooding over what could have been, she headed straight to a Tokyo karaoke bar for a night of fun with family and friends.
She says: “”As much as I was disappointed, I wanted to cry and I was upset, I was also like ‘well, it’s done now, I can go and have a good time with my friends and family and with G (her training partner Georgie Hunter Bell) and with Trev (her coach Trevor Painter) and celebrate the fact that we made it through this terrible year. I think it’s really important that I went through it.
She attributes her new mindset to “spirituality,” adding: “I just believe that within the universe everything is already planned, it’s already made, it’s going to happen.
“That’s one thing I tell myself before races, ‘all you need is to show up’, it’s already planned anyway, what’s going to happen is going to happen. And not to stress too much about what’s going to happen. You can take that into everything in life. What’s going to be is going to be. The spirituality seems to be the best thing that fits me with that.
“I think everything for me always happens for a reason. So even looking back on this injury, it might take a couple of months or weeks or maybe even a year to figure out why that may have happened, but I’ll always be able to see the lesson and learn from it. “I think, for me, this year – all of this bad stuff happened – genuinely was for me to actually realise how strong I am.”
Keely, who sought advice on coping with injury from former Olympian Dame Kelly Holmes, has also had some real highs, despite her setbacks. She won the Diamond League event in August in Silesia, in a new 800m leading time for the year, and also her second fastest time ever.
But she was trolled after her World Championship bronze – with negative comments online about her media work, endorsement deals and even about her having fun with her friends.
Again, she refused to let it bring her down for long, telling the High Performance podcast: “There was this bunch of comments like ‘you should be embarrassed’, ‘what a let down of a show.’ And that’s obviously not nice – ‘oh she’s too busy making TikTok videos’.
“There’s so many hours to kill when you’re out there doing nothing. I’m like, ‘I’m going to do whatever I want’. I took one day to be sad about it and then I don’t think about it again.”
As well as honing her personal resilience, Keely has stopped being superstitious about races. She says: “People get into superstitions sometimes. I broke mine this year. I used to always race with my rings off, I would never, ever wear them. And my jewellery as well, I’d always take it off.
“This year I was like ‘no, Keely, we’ll keep it on’, and I raced with it on. It was like a change in me. We’re in a new era, this is a new me. Otherwise I’m there trying to pull my rings off my finger.”
And Keely has turned her anxiety to positive effect. Recalling how she started feeling anxious two years ago – but overcame it using visualisation – she says: “I was thinking ‘this is horrible’. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I try and flip it into excitement. You can get anxious for a race, but I’ll call it excitement.
“I’m very much a visualiser, a drawer, a writer of notes. I just like to say little things to myself that I might write down that keep me in that confident, winning mindset. I might draw the podium and there’ll be a GB flag at the top, or look at the medal. I’ll see it and believe it so much that it’s got to happen. It hasn’t worked out every single time, but more often than not! For me this year, I feel like my 19 year old self again. I was such a carefree teenager.”
And, single at present, Keely now feels there is no reason why she can’t have it all. She explains: “I think you really can have it all. You can have the family and the amazing kids and the job and the career and you can be successful – and you can have great friends and family and it can actually all go right at the same time. I’m very young to be saying that, but I do think it’s possible.”
Keely is more chilled out than ever about every day life, but when it comes to training, she believes in following a punishing routine, asking herself: “How much pain can I put myself through?”
Describing her routine, she says: “I just think ‘the more pain I put myself through now the easier it is race day’. Your legs are burning, your head’s spinning, I literally can’t see for hours afterwards. I hate being sick, when I’m sick I cry, so I’m crying mid-session.”
Compared to training, the actual races are mild, according to Keely. She says: “Race day doesn’t hurt half as much. The race hurts, but the adrenaline’s so high sometimes I can hardly feel it.
“I think your body goes into fight or flight. You think you’re dead, but if you don’t give it that extra everything and then you fail, you’re going to look back and think ‘Why didn’t I try harder?’ I sit there sometimes and think ‘Why did I choose to be good at this?’”
But, despite his demands on the track, she has a laugh with her coach Trevor Painter. She says: “We have a laugh, we have a joke. He takes nothing too seriously.”