Olympic 800m champion was recognised within the King’s New Yr Honours Listing for her contribution to athletics
Keely Hodgkinson has acknowledged she needs to place athletics “on the map” after receiving her MBE at Windsor Fortress (Might 13).
The Olympic 800m champion was awarded the accolade for her contribution to athletics – final 12 months she broke her personal British file with 1:54.61, topped the rostrum in Paris and was then topped BBC Sports activities Character of the Yr.
The 23-year-old turned 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 following technology.
That might additionally embrace Princess Charlotte after Prince William, who handed Hodgkinson her MBE, instructed the Olympic champion that his daughter is a eager runner.
“The prince instructed me that she is doing the 400m and the hurdles on the minute and that she did watch me in Paris,” Hodgkinson mentioned. “He instructed me that he remembers me profitable and that he wished he may very well 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 planet, which means that Hodgkinson will face compatriots Georgia Hunter-Bell and Jemma Reekie within the Swedish capital.
She can 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 file 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.
“At the moment I really feel actually good, we’re in a extremely good place,” she mentioned. “The hamstring progressed properly, we took our time with it and now we have had no issues to this point again in coaching, which has been actually optimistic.
“We’re form of on monitor. I’m nonetheless 4 or 5 weeks away from opening my season however I’m trying ahead to it and it’s [Stockholm Diamond League] an enormous race, it’s mainly an Olympic last once more.”
