LIEVIN, France – Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson has set her sights on the world short track 800m record at Thursday’s Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais Trophée EDF at the Arena Stade Couvert in Lievin, after producing a stunning British record performance last weekend.
The 23-year-old clocked 1:56.33 in the heats at the UK Athletics Indoor Championships in Birmingham on Saturday, obliterating her own national record by almost one second and registering the fastest time in a women’s indoor 800m race in 24 years.
KEELY HODGKINSON THINKS RECORD IS WITHIN RANGE
The performance moved Hodgkinson to third on the all-time indoor list and put Jolanda Ceplak’s world record of 1:55.82, set in 2002, firmly within range. Austria’s Stefanie Graf sits second on the list with 1:55.85, also from 2002.
“I have been very vocal in the past about wanting to get it,” said Hodgkinson, who captured Olympic gold in Paris in 2024. “I feel like it is my record to break. We’ll give it a good go.”
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The middle-distance star announced before Saturday’s race that she would skip Sunday’s final in Birmingham to focus on Thursday’s World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting in northern France, describing her national record run as “a personal challenge.”
Hodgkinson’s participation in Birmingham was necessary to secure qualification for the World Indoor Championships next month.
“I had to come to qualify for the Worlds, and that is why I was only doing one round,” Hodgkinson explained. “But it was a good test. It is three years since I ran indoors, so I knew I had to go out there and stay focused.”
The British runner added: “We didn’t set out to run a world lead, but I started well and just kept it going. It was a nice surprise. It was a really strong day.”
FEMKE BOL TO MAKE 600M DEBUT
Thursday’s meeting in Lievin will also feature Dutch star Femke Bol, who will contest her first-ever 600m race after making a remarkable 800m debut earlier this month.
The 25-year-old, a two-time world champion in the 400m hurdles, clocked 1:59.07 to break the Dutch short track record in Metz. Organizers have suggested that Bol could attack the world indoor 600m best of 1:23.41, which was set by Hodgkinson in Manchester in 2023 when she shaved 0.03 seconds off the previous mark established by Russia’s Olga Kotlyarova in 2004.
The Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais Trophée EDF represents one of the premier stops on the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold circuit and promises to deliver elite-level competition as athletes fine-tune their preparations ahead of the World Indoor Championships in Poland, scheduled for March 20-22.
