Keely Hodgkinson’s stunning defeat is the shock she needed

Shockholm became a popular refrain inside the old Olympic stadium in the Swedish capital on Sunday after Keely Hodgkinson suffered a rare defeat.

The slow motion replays after Hodgkinson’s 800m Diamond League defeat clearly showed the disappointment etched on her face as she clocked a personal best only to be pipped to the win by Audrey Werro, shattering her own PB by two seconds.

But by the time the Briton was talking to the gathered media, she instead painted defeat as a positive. “Honestly, I’m not disappointed,” she said. “I’ve mentioned the world record and, to get down to the times that we’re talking about, you can’t do it by yourself. So, I think this will actually be a pivotal moment.”

"One of the quickest 800s we've seen in a long time" 🤯🔥

Keely Hodgkinson runs a personal best of 1:54.33 but finishes second as Aubrey Werro wins the women's 800m in 1:53.98. pic.twitter.com/3EogAw7Vfa

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) June 7, 2026

This wasn’t simply an athlete trying to persuade herself of the fact that such a loss could actually be good. The 24-year-old has used setbacks countlessly in her nascent career, and almost always to good effect.

The one-time bridesmaid of middle-distance running, she was twice runner-up at the World Championships – first in Eugene in 2022 and then the following year in Budapest. A year later still, she was the Olympic champion, Paris proving the current pinnacle of her career.

As she returned to training post-Paris, her 2025 hopes looked set to be completely derailed by a double hamstring tear and yet she made it to Tokyo for a third World Championships.

That she was there at all was no mean feat but the bronze she earned is not the medal type she wants to deal in, and a difficult 2025 and Tokyo stoked the fire in her to build-up to 2026. An injury-free winter – her first ever – acted as a springboard to breaking the world record for the 800m indoors and then winning the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń in March.

The expectation from both herself and her M11 training group as well as the wider athletics world was that she would go on to dominate the outdoor season. That has not materialised thus far.

In her defence, Hodgkinson wasn’t entirely 800m outdoor match fit. She stood on the start line with slight trepidation. Her focus in competition and training has been over shorter and longer distances – her previous Diamond League outing, she finished seventh over 400m in Rome.

Audrey Werro ran the the third fastest 800m time in history as she beat Hodgkinson, who finished with a personal best (Photo: Getty)

This hopping from one capital city to another and one distance to the next are all part of a wider plan masterminded by her coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows… namely the world record.

And their sights have long been set on achieving that in London on 18 July, and she has still five-and-a-half weeks in which to prepare.

Even in defeat, the belief is undiminished. As she put it herself of losing to Werro: “She’s getting the best out of me and I still believe in myself – the world record is still my goal in London next month. I still believe I can do it.”

Her coaches, who she calls her “track parents”, had talked about Hodgkinson perpetually needing new targets and new motivations. The world record currently stands at 1min 53.28sec set by Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983 and Hodgkinson, with a best of 1min 54.33sec still has more than a second to make up on it.

Cutting that down will be the sole thinking in her waking hours. “I really work well with a little bit of anger and motivation,” she said, and her coaching will be content with her being angry for the ensuing training sessions.

Hodgkinson is notorious for always pushing the parameters in training, if anything the work will be on reining her in between now and London in order to avoid overexerting herself and picking up an injury.

She has shone with rivals in the past – think Athing Mu and Mary Moraa previously – now she has another true challenge to both her hegemony and a potential world record. Athletics has always been about great rivalries and the sport may just have got its latest version.

Werro also thinks the world record will go in the coming weeks but that she will be the one to do it. Either way, the 43-year mark looks on borrowed time.