A millionaire’s surprising grant helped a teenage girl to the Olympics, where she became a track running sensation – Keely Hodgkinson quickly rose to stardom

The European Championship week in Munich can be seen on channels from August 11 to 21. You can find live broadcasts, highlights, the competition schedule, interesting news and topics on ‘s competition page.

Even at the beginning of last year Keely Hodgkinson was able to imagine this European Championship as a supporting role at most.

It was about a relatively unknown athlete. About the young and promising Briton, who would need a few more years to reach the position of a real contender among the best runners.

Now Hodgkinson goes to Saturday’s 800-meter final race as the early favorite, whose only goal is to return home as European champion. Everything has changed quickly, including his own expectations.

During the Olympic year, it seemed like only the sky was the limit for development. Hodgkinson broke the under-20 world record and won the European indoor championship. In Tokyo, he ran from the bush to the Olympic silver, which exploded the popularity. In addition to these, he also won the Diamond League.

All this as an athlete who would not have been seen at the Olympics at all, if the Games had not been moved by a year. At the original time of the Games, in the summer of 2020, Hodgkinson was a teenage criminology student trying to survive as an athlete.

Then came a fairytale year. It was followed by news headlines, interview requests, sponsors. A new star has appeared in the athletics sky, and Hodgkinson is still only 20 years old.

by Jessica Ennis-Hill success at the 2012 Olympics was a turning point for young Hodgkinson.

The 10-year-old little girl, like millions of other Britons, was glued to the television to watch the seven-year-old knock out a new British record and celebrate the Olympic gold in front of the home crowd in London.

Until then, Hodgkinson had thought of himself first and foremost as a swimmer. He was a talented swimmer and had been swimming competitively for years. During the London Olympics, he trained in the pool five times a week. After training, however, at home we discussed the gifts that parents and coaches had seen at school running events.

It annoyed Hodgkinson. He lived to the full with his swimming hobby and set his future goals on it. Father had a different opinion and was convinced that Hodgkinson would be a better runner than a swimmer.

– We always argued about the same thing. He said I was running better, and I always took it seriously and asked if he thought I was a bad swimmer. I was just being stubborn. Eventually, however, I joined a local club and became more interested in athletics, Hodgkinson told The Guardian (you’re going to another service) before the Olympics.

An empty thought had not been torn apart. When the school ran two laps on the track, Hodgkinson was the number one in the group and, even on a short distance, even passed his classmates in a lap. Participation in the games was limited to one trip and one relay because, according to the teachers, Hodgkinson would otherwise have fixed the whole pot. A soccer player from the same school made an effort to reach the top Ella Toonewho won the competitions of his age group.

Real success started to come at the age of 14. First in school championships, then at national level. The following year, Hodgkinson was already shining in international arenas when he won gold at the under-18 World Championships.

The sport chosen was 800 meters instead of the previous longer distances.

The takeoff was perhaps too fast, as Hodgkinson had to manage with limited resources despite the upcoming Olympics. The selected top athletes received financial support to develop, but the young upstart was left off the list when the pandemic closed the money taps.

One possibility was to look for sponsors, but one person had already noticed the talent.

During the London Games, 18 athletes were supported by a millionaire From Barrie Wells, for a total of about two million pounds. The passionate sportsman had made his fortune in the insurance industry but switched his business to charity in 2008, preferring to sponsor British athletes. Ennis-Hill, among others, had received help during the 2012 Olympics.

Since then, Wells had already had time to shift his bets from elite athletes to charity for seriously ill children, but made an exception when he heard on the radio about a young promise who was training on the outskirts of Manchester with a local club. A couple of the races I saw on the spot made an impression.

– I couldn’t believe that he didn’t get financial support. In my eyes, he was perhaps the best hope for a medal by Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson after.

With Wells’ annual support of £15,000, Hodgkinson, among other things, got with his coach from humid Manchester to a month-long training camp in Florida to prepare for the Tokyo Games.

The effort was rewarded in the bright lights of Shinjuku, when 19-year-old Hodgkinson ran to Olympic silver with a new British record time. The Olympic medal was Britain’s first in the middle distances since 2004.

Among the congratulatory messages, Toone was also happy, who, like his childhood friend, had earned a place as an Olympic athlete on the Great Britain soccer team.

Still in 2020, Hodgkinson said he hopes for his near future, above all, to break under two minutes. The Olympics were a nice idea, but the runner stated that it wouldn’t be a disaster to be left out of them, as he would hopefully have another 10-15 years left in his career.

Now his record is 1:55.88 and the Olympics were also a huge success. A fairytale year raised this summer’s goals to the sky.

– I can look back on last year after my career. Now I expect more from myself. I’m looking forward to better times, smoother performances and bigger races. Last year I was often fourth or fifth, now I want to win those races. In that sense, the approach has changed, he painted in March (you switch to another service).

So far, however, the most important races of the season have mainly fed the hunger.

The World Indoor Championships in March were missed due to an injury. At the World Championships in Eugene in July, Hodgkinson became world champion Athing to me in eight hundredths of a second. A couple of weeks later at the Commonwealth Games in Kenya Mary Moraa left him for silver by three-tenths.

Just like in 2012, more motivation came through television pictures. This time the hero was not Ennis-Hill, but Toone, who decided the European football championship for England. The former teammates and runners were so close that Hodgkinson was even called “mini-Ella.”

Now Hodgkinson wants to win the European championship in Toone’s footsteps.

The EC circuits are the last chance of the season to become the women’s title race winner for the first time.