When Keely Hodgkinson stormed to the Olympic 800m title in Paris in the summer of 2024, the Wigan-born sensation was hailed as the golden girl of British sport.
The then 22-year-old arrived in the French capital as the heavy favourite but delivered under intense pressure, scrutiny and expectation.
A host of accolades followed, including the Sports Personality of the Year award. Hodgkinson already had lucrative deals with global brands such as Nike and Omega, and experts predicted after the event that she could earn as much as £1million a year in endorsements alone before the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
Fast forward 14 months from Paris and Hodgkinson is reeling from a year she has candidly described as a ‘s***show’, sparking concerns she may be in danger of following other successful athletes – such as Emma Raducanu – in failing to fully capitalise on her success.
It has been the season from hell for Hodgkinson, Britain’s only track and field gold medallist at the 2024 Olympics.
She had been struggling with a hamstring issue not long after the Games and suffered a tear of the muscle shortly before she was due to return for a world record attempt at her own event, the Keely Klassic in Birmingham in February.
Hodgkinson then had two significant setbacks – including one she blamed on sitting in a car for too long on her way to collecting an MBE to recognise her Olympic success in May.
Hodgkinson was still the one to beat in the 800m at the World Championships in Tokyo last month – despite racing just twice this year and only making her first appearance since Paris at a meeting in August – but could only manage third place, a result she looked visibly disappointed by.
She was again struggling, this time with her back and a stomach bug, when she ran at the event in the Japanese city.
Before heading to Tokyo, Hodgkinson admitted she’d had a ‘challenging’ year, and the second injury ‘definitely broke my heart a little bit’.
‘I was very down after that one,’ she added.
Hodgkinson’s enforced break from the track spanned 376 days, the bulk of which was spent trying to return to action.
‘People were assuming I was doing nothing,’ she told The Guardian. ‘And when you’re in a bad place anyway, negative comments stick out to you more. The human brain naturally looks for negativity, and what people think, even when it’s so far from reality. I like the block button. That’s my favourite.’
Hodgkinson’s celebrity status grew even when she was absent from the track, giving her a different pressure to deal with. In February, she appeared on the Jonathan Ross Show and a month later, she dazzled fans with a daring outfit on the red carpet of the BRIT Awards.
She remains one of Britain’s most famous female athletes. No longer does she go under the radar. Everything she does is scrutinised. She even made headlines earlier this month after changing her look and being pictured with darker hair as she touched down in New York City ahead of the all-female Athlos athletics event.
Captioning new headshots, which capture her transformation from various angles, she wrote: ‘New York made me do it.’
Three days earlier, the typically blonde Hodgkinson had cruised to a first-place finish with a time of one minute 56.53 seconds at an all-women’s meeting, and was duly rewarded with the spoils of her victory by tennis legend Serena Williams and a tiara worth around £22,000.
She then stunned fans in a white bikini and a braless, see-through dress after sharing pictures of a holiday to the Maldives last week.
The athlete captioned her bikini picture with the words: ‘Fish are friends’ as she sipped on a drink.
She also shared a video of herself wearing a very see-thorugh red dress which she wore without a bra while taking on the viral trend ”Throwing a Fit’ trend.
The trend involves the person saying: ‘Sorry I’m late, I was throwing a fit…’ before introducing ‘the fit’ and showing off their new outfit.
Her social media activity is not for everyone and has led to criticism from people who think her focus should purely be on the track.
While that may be unfair, it nonetheless feels ever so familiar. Raducanu herself went through something similar, after going from up-and-coming prospect to global superstar in a matter of weeks following her US Open triumph as an unseeded 18-year-old in 2021.
Yet the British tennis sensation, 22, perhaps offers a blueprint for Hodgkinson to follow – of what not to do after such a career-defining success.
Raducanu is yet to win a major since her stunning achievement at Flushing Meadows and she has been open as to some of the reasons behind her struggles.
In late 2024, she admitted her commercial off-field activities had impacted her tennis in the years after her US Open glory.
‘I’m obviously very grateful and fortunate to have had certain experiences and opportunities but I wasn’t prepared for it,’ she said.
‘I was always working really hard but I just think that I wasn’t prepared as well for the other things that inevitably do take some energy out of you.
‘I think now I’m a lot more structured. I’ll be like: ‘Okay, I have this time where one hour we will talk about business. And now I’m going to train for the rest of the week’. Also I think I’ve learned how to say no a bit more.
‘Initially I felt really bad for letting people down. I’d always want to do extra for whatever partner or magazine or whatever I’m shooting for.
‘I’d always want to do extra if they wanted to do another half day. I would do it and I’d fit it in around my schedule. I would put my practices early and then do that in the afternoon.’
There are other parallels, too. Raducanu has had more than her fair share of injury problems, like Hodgkinson, and found it difficult to deal with the demands of being a ‘celebrity athlete’.
It is up to Hodgkinson to ensure she learns from Raducanu’s mistakes and retain her crown as Britain’s golden girl.
