World Athletics Championships: Keely Hodgkinson says athletes don’t get recognition they deserve
Keely Hodgkinson is among the contenders for 800 metres victory at the World Athletics Championships
Keely Hodgkinson believes athletics stars never get the credit they deserve.
The 21-year-old is in Budapest ahead of her assault on the 800 metres title at the World Championships.
Emma Raducanu’s US Open win in 2021 catapulted her to stardom while Hodgkinson is still a relative unknown outside of athletics in the UK, despite her Olympic and world silver medals along with three European golds.
“I do think us athletes work a lot harder than some other sports and we don’t get the recognition we deserve,” Hodgkinson said. “I don’t know how but hopefully we will get there.
Hodgkinson has previously won medals at the Olympics and the world championships
“I think because an athlete is individual, obviously you have your team around you which is great but you have a lot of individualisation time. I think it’s just hard. If it’s a team and you lose, the whole team is supporting you. If it’s you, everything is on you and you’re the one that controls what happens when you set off.
“That’s just a different kind of pressure. Training for these events, it’s tough. Footballers think they’re fit, they’re just not. Because if you brought them down to the track they wouldn’t keep up.
“Everyone works hard. Tennis players work really hard, everything is just different. But in all the different aspects you have in athletics, I don’t think people realise the behind the scenes of what goes into it.”
Hodgkinson has also limited the brands she works with – just Nike, Omega and Maurten – to ensure she remains focused on training, but was still called ‘athletics’ new It girl’ in an interview with Vogue this month.
“When you work with brands they also want something back,” she adds. “Days here, days in London, media days. If you’ve got six, seven, eight different brands your time is going to be taken up quite a bit – and my main priority is training.
Can Hodgkinson claim gold for Great Britain in Budapest?
“I just want to make sure they understand and they don’t want too much from me that it takes away or stresses me out, or anything like that. I’m protecting who I work with just to see what comes along.”
Her quest for 800m gold starts in the heats on Wednesday but world champion, the USA’s Athing Mu, has been keeping Hodgkinson guessing over whether she will compete in Hungary or focus on next year’s Paris Olympics.
Hodgkinson finished second behind Mu in Eugene last year and at the Tokyo Olympics, with their battle still poised to be one of the races of the Championships.
“When you’re missing a big name, when people come they want to watch that,” she said. “It would definitely be a shame if she’s missing. But we don’t know what’s going on on her side of the world and what her story is.
“We’ve not heard anything so I guess we just have to wait and see, but I try not to think about who’s going to turn up and who’s not.
“You kind of go in with the mentality that everyone’s going to be there and if they’re not, they’re not. That (gold) is a personal goal of mine anyway. So it would just be quite fulfilling if I did that.”
