Hodgkinson’s 800m showdown headlines mouthwatering European Championships
They say betting is a mug’s game. But here are two predictions to take to the bank. The European Athletics Championships this week in Birmingham, with the BBC shoving its considerable heft behind it, will be far bigger than people expect. And the women’s 800m final on Friday night, featuring three of the best female stars in any sport, should shine as brightly as a supernova.
The list of great athletes who will grace the Alexander Stadium in the coming days is long and lustrous. Mondo Duplantis, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Yaroslava Mahuchikh are all Olympic and world champions and world record holders. Amy Hunt, Matt Hudson-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson should also do Britain proud. But no event is more anticipated than the women’s 800m.
Quick Guide
European Athletics Championship: day-by-day guide
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Monday 10 August
Amy Hunt is a warm favourite for the women’s 100m (9.50pm), but no British athlete has won more European golds than DIna Asher-Smith, the defending champion. Elsewhere, Norwegian superstar Jakob Ingebrigtsen returns from an Achilles injury in the men’s 5,000m (8.40pm) and there’s also an intriguing 4x400m mixed relay final (9.40pm).
Tuesday 11 August
Keely Hodgkinson begins the defence of her women’s 800m title (12.05pm). The big event of the night is the men’s 100m, where Italian Marcel Jacobs is the favourite to defend his crown (9.45pm), with Britain’s Romell Glave his closest challenger. The women’s 110m hurdles (9.30pm) should also be a cracker.
Wednesday 12 August
Local lad Matt Hudson-Smith is expected to win the men’s 400m gold for a third time (8.50pm), while Emily Newnham should medal in the women’s 400m hurdles (9.08pm), although Slovakia’s Emma Zapletalova is the wide-margin favourite.
Thursday, 13 August
Hodgkinson goes in the women’s 800m semi-finals (12:10pm). A stacked evening card includes a men’s 800m final (9.28pm) where Max Burgin and Ben Pattison should feature and the women’s 200m where Hunt (9.50pm) will be favourite. In the women’s steeplechase (8.30pm), Britain’s Elise Thorner should cap a breakout season with gold.
Friday 14 August
All eyes will be on the women’s 800m final (9.45pm), which could be the race of the year. In June Swiss star Audrey Werro ran the third fastest time in history to beat Hodgkinson in Stockholm. Can the Brit get her revenge? Former 400m hurdles world champion Femke Broeders-Bol is a live threat too. Elsewhere Karsten Warholm should win another men’s 400m hurdles (8.40pm).
Saturday, 15 August
Nafi Thiam’s withdrawal with injury means there will be a new heptathlon champion for the first time since 2016 and Katarina Johnson-Thompson will hope to take advantage (7.45pm). Britain also have medal chances in the men’s and women’s 4x100m relay (9.33 and 9.48pm), a strong men’s 1500m featuring Jake Wightman (9.07pm) and the women’s 400m (8.10pm) where Amber Anning should medal.
Sunday, 16 August
Britain will expect a bumper day with Georgia Hunter Bell favourite in the women’s 1500m (9.13pm), along with strong medal chances in the women’s and men’s 4x400m relay (9.33pm and 9.48pm) and the mixed 4x100m relay (8.35pm). Early birds can catch the women’s and men’s marathon (7:30am and 8:10am), while Mondo Duplantis will hope to get his season back on track with gold in the men’s pole vault (7.30pm)
Keely Hodgkinson, the Paris 800m Olympic champion and 11-time major medal winner, predicts it will be the “race of the championships”. When you look at her rivals for the podium it’s hard to argue. The biggest danger comes from Audrey Werro, the 22-year-old Swiss who has run the third, fourth and ninth fastest times in history this summer. There’s also a lively curveball in Femke Broeders-Bol, the former 400m hurdles world champion who has moved up to 800m this year.
So what might happen? Not even Hodgkinson, for all her nous and insight, can be sure. “Going to championships is completely different,” she says. “This is what I love about them. I’ve gone into them ranked eighth in the Olympics in Tokyo and came out with a silver; I’ve gone in as favourite and not won. You can maybe try to predict what others are going to do but ultimately you don’t know. And that’s the beauty of the 800m, you sometimes have to think on your feet.”
One form line stands out: the Stockholm Diamond League in early June, when Hodgkinson kicked hard with 300m to go, only to find Werro muscling back past her in the final 100m. That was breathtaking enough. But Werro’s time – 1min 53.98sec – was even more astounding, given it made her the third fastest woman in the event’s history.
Hodgkinson also ran a personal best of 1:54:33 that day but many felt she underestimated Werro, after beating her all last year and at the World Indoor Championships in March, and went too soon.
“I don’t really think I did anything wrong in that race,” she says. “I didn’t know what she was capable of at that point. I think that just shows you can’t underestimate anybody. If you look at all our other head-to-heads, you wouldn’t have thought she was going to hang on.”
Hodgkinson makes a second point. “It was my opening race. I think people are trying to make me feel like it was a failure and it really wasn’t. That was a British record. It was my fastest time ever and I’m going to remind myself of that because I’m proud of that.”
Whatever happens, Hodgkinson will be roared on by a sellout crowd. But she admits that the stuff she sees on social media often makes her wince. “I think anyone I’ve ever bumped into has been very nice and supportive, which is always really great,” she says. “But as the sport grows and the athletes grow you are subjected to more opinions and it can be frustrating at times. You’ve just got to let that go. Sometimes I delete Twitter and just focus on what I have to do.”
Asked about the worst things she has seen, she starts to laugh and refers to a chat she had with her training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell, who won Commonwealth 800m gold last week.
“Me and Georgia were laughing the other day because we saw a TikTok, and it was like: ‘Georgia pays Keely 200k to not do the Commonwealth Games.’ I thought well I didn’t get that money so where the fuck’s it going? But I don’t know. People make up stuff. We just laugh about it. But it’s a strange world we live in sometimes.”
For now, though, Hodgkinson is fully focused on training and insists she is back in top shape following a freak knee injury that came about after tripping on a metal grate in late June. “I had a tricky few weeks but it’s really good,” she says. “Honestly I just think it’s really good. Audrey’s come on really well, Femke’s running well. We’ll just see what happens.”
One advantage Hodgkinson has is that she has run more championship 800m races than Werro and Broeders-Bol. Could that be key? “I think experience can be both a positive and a negative thing. I think it can sometimes allow you to overthink, because it’s like, ‘I’ve done it this way’. So I just like to go back to basics.
“When I was young, I didn’t care. I had nothing to lose and I think it’s important to me that I hold on to that and I just race with courage and fearlessness. That’s how I get the best out of myself.”
The message is clear enough. Now comes the hard part: delivering it.
