Olympic 800m champion was recognised within the King’s New Yr Honours Checklist for her contribution to athletics
Keely Hodgkinson has acknowledged she needs to place athletics “on the map” after receiving her MBE at Windsor Citadel (Could 13).
The Olympic 800m champion was awarded the accolade for her contribution to athletics – final 12 months she broke her personal British document with 1:54.61, topped the rostrum in Paris and was then topped BBC Sports activities Character of the Yr.
The 23-year-old grew to become simply the third British feminine to safe gold within the 800m on the Video games – after Ann Packer at Tokyo 1964 and Kelly Holmes at Athens 2004 – and is now intent on inspiring the subsequent era.
That might additionally embody Princess Charlotte after Prince William, who handed Hodgkinson her MBE, advised the Olympic champion that his daughter is a eager runner.
“The prince advised me that she is doing the 400m and the hurdles on the minute and that she did watch me in Paris,” Hodgkinson stated. “He advised me that he remembers me profitable and that he wished he could possibly be there to see it himself.”
Hodgkinson hasn’t competed for the reason that Olympics and is planning to open up her season at subsequent month’s Stockholm Diamond League (June 15).
The ladies’s discipline options all eight of the top-ranked 800m runners on the earth, which means that Hodgkinson will face compatriots Georgia Hunter-Bell and Jemma Reekie within the Swedish capital.
She will even go up in opposition to Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa, who secured 800m silver and bronze respectively in Paris.
Hodgkinson had set her sights on breaking Jolanda Čeplak’s long-standing world indoor 800m document of 1:55.82 again at her personal occasion – the Keely Klassic in Birmingham – in February.
Nevertheless, the Brit’s plans have been scuppered by a hamstring damage, sustained throughout her last coaching session earlier than the meet.
Now, after one other coaching block in South Africa, Hodgkinson is able to go once more.
“Presently I really feel actually good, we’re in a very good place,” she stated. “The hamstring progressed properly, we took our time with it and we have now had no issues to date again in coaching, which has been actually constructive.
“We’re sort of on observe. I’m nonetheless 4 or 5 weeks away from opening my season however I’m wanting ahead to it and it’s [Stockholm Diamond League] an enormous race, it’s mainly an Olympic last once more.”
