The BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year has long divided opinion – can it really be about personality when Nigel Mansell has won it twice? But however nebulous the criteria for winning, Keely Hodgkinson ticked every possible box in 2024. She was a cold-blooded killer on the track, a free spirit off it: Killing Eve’s Villanelle in super spikes.
What makes Hodgkinson so interesting – aside from her immense talent – is that she does things on her own terms. The Olympic Games in Paris was no different. In the British prep camp she walked around with Chanel sunglasses and a Louis Vuitton handbag. Several times staff pointed out that it was not official GB kit, but she just smiled and carried on.
Her confidence manifested itself in a different way in the 800m final in Paris. Conventional wisdom suggested that the faster the race, the greater her chance of victory. Instead Hodgkinson took the lead after 300m and only slowly wound it up, before turning on the turbochargers down the home straight.
It was a moment of glory and sweet dominance. The fact that she had won silver three times in major championships – the Olympics in 2021 and the worlds in 2022 and 2023 – made the step to the highest step of the podium all the sweeter.
Victory in Paris sent her into sporting stratosphere, but it was an invitation she received shortly afterwards that made her realise she was now in a different orbit. It came from 90-year-old Giorgio Armani, who invited her to Milan fashion week with several other top Olympians. While there, he pinched her cheek then delivered a one-word exclamation: “Bella.”
This year was indeed beautiful for Hodgkinson. In truth, she should be an even bigger star than she already is. The good news is that, at 22, time is on her side. In a world where athletes increasingly offer bland soundbites, Hodgkinson will happily joke about her occasional ditziness – like the time when she attempted to boil milk in a kettle in the Olympic Village in Tokyo.
In Paris, meanwhile, she was about to walk out to collect her gold medal when a British official spotted that she was not wearing the correct brand of trainers. She had no time to change and ended up relying on the quickwittedness of UK Athletics’ press officer, Liz Birchall, who took the shoes off her own feet to help her.
Hodgkinson’s timekeeping has become a running joke within her team. However Trevor Painter, who alongside his wife Jenny Meadows coaches her, insists that such behaviour is just a part of who she is.
“We have a saying that 15 mins is OK,” he says. “Sometimes it’s 20 to 25 and she just strolls in smiling: ‘Whatever.’ It’s something I’m not too bothered about because if we put her in a box and tell her you’ve got to conform, she’ll not be the person we saw run 1min 54sec. That kind of free-spirited nature makes her who she is.”
But when it comes to her profession, Hodgkinson has the uncanny ability to flick the switch. Even when she was not at her best in 2024 she was able to deliver. At the European Championships in Rome in June, she was in her sick bed all day before the 800m final and advised by the team doctor not to run. Yet she somehow gritted her way to gold.
Her willingness to stand up for herself has long been evident. After winning a stunning silver in the Tokyo Games as a teenager, Piers Morgan sneeringly suggested on X that medal shouldn’t be celebrated because she had lost. For good measure he also spelt her name ‘Keeley’. Hodgkinson’s brilliant one-word response? “Keely*”
There has been adversity along the way as well. In her early teens Hodgkinson was unable to run at all due to a non-cancerous tumour which has left her almost deaf in one ear. “It had grown for 10 years and no one had spotted it,” she said. “And it was so close to my nervous system that I could have had facial palsy if it had touched the nerve. So it was a bit risky getting it out.”
Indeed, if things had turned out differently in another direction, Hodgkinson might have ended up as a seriously good swimmer instead. It was her dad, Dean, who persuaded her to switch sports, although it took him a while to get her to change her mind. “I was just stubborn,” she admitted.
Athletics will be mightily grateful that she listened. Between 1954 and 2004, track and field won the Spoty award 17 times, 11 times more than the next best sport, Formula One. But until Tuesday night there had only been one winner in athletics since then: Mo Farah in 2017.
In 2024 Hodgkinson flipped the script. Next year, she will attempt to rip up the world record books. History suggests it would be unwise to bet against her.
