Kiley Hodgkinson: Olympic champion aims for 800m outdoor world record at London Diamond League | Athletics news

Keely Hodgkinson begins her outdoor season next week and is focusing on this year’s Diamond League events to break Jarmila Kratochvilova’s women’s 800m world record from 1983; A Diamond League meet will be held in July in London, where Hodgkinson will compete

Keely Hodgkinson is a six-time world medalist

Olympic 800m champion Keeley Hodgkinson has not ruled out breaking athletics’ long-standing world record at the London Diamond League meeting in July.

Hodgkinson set the first world record of her career in February, smashing the 24-year-old’s indoor 800m marker, set on the day she was born, by one minute, 54.87 seconds in Livin.

The Briton and her coaches are confident she has what it takes to beat the 43-year-old’s outdoor 800m time to one minute, 53.28 seconds around Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova, but Hodgkinson will still need a perfect storm of conditions for everything to come together.

“Obviously I’d love to do it on home soil,” Hodgkinson said, adding that 50 days will go by until the Diamond League returns to the capital.

“I get really excited about London, the whole crowd and everything. I think it’s great fun competing there as a British person, and it’s definitely the main thing I’m looking forward to on the calendar this year.”

Hodgkinson explained that the decision to target Kratochvilova’s record, whenever she does, will be a joint decision in consultation with her coaches, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows.

“I think we have a plan for what we want to happen, obviously,” he said. “Sports sometimes has its own plan, and it’s not something you can just plan out and think, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’

“If I get in the shape where I think I want to go it will be early, or it could be a bit later in the season, it could just be that. I haven’t missed a training session, so I’m in a really good place.”

Hodgkinson will also compete at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham later this year (AP Photo/Peter David Josek)

Hodgkinson: Extended Games ‘Nonsense’

Some have speculated that Kratochvilova’s achievement was facilitated by performance-enhancing drugs, which the now-75-year-old has always denied, and the allegations have never been proven.

Earlier this month, the controversial Enhanced Games, which allows the use of such substances under, the organization claims, under strict medical supervision, premiered in Las Vegas.

Despite being offered up to $1m (£744,00) for a “world record”, only one participating athlete, Greek swimmer Kristians Gokolomiev, managed to beat a world-standard time, doing so in a swimsuit banned in official competition.

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American Fred Curley won the 100 meters at the Enhanced Games in 9.97 seconds, a time that put him last in the final at the Paris Olympics two years ago, where he ran 9.81 to win bronze.

In 2017, World Athletics, led by the organization’s president, British Olympic champion Lord Sebastian Coe, established the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent authority responsible for managing threats to integrity.

Asked about the importance of clean sport, Hodgkinson replied: “I think it’s just being appreciated for the hard work and dedication we put in.

“I think the sport has done a great job over the last few decades of making it a clean sport. I trust the people I fight against, and it’s not a thought in my brain that I think about.

“So yeah, we’d call that stuff (advanced games) bullshit, because that’s what it was.”