Ann Brightwell will sit down in her Cheshire home tomorrow afternoon and watch three British women try to emulate her feats from 1964. Lord Coe will be in Tokyo and monitoring the progress of a teenage prodigy he believes can emerge from “the killing zone”. The women’s 800m final is a race to make names and save face for an ailing British athletics team.
At the first Tokyo Olympics, Brightwell — then Packer — had to be persuaded to run the 800m after failing to win her main event, the 400m. She considered going shopping instead, but she turned up and provided an indelible Olympic moment as she flew down the home straight into a million living rooms as she won the gold medal.
Now Keely Hodgkinson, a Wigan criminology student aged just 19, is in the final. Jemma Reekie, a Scot nicknamed “the sloth”, is 23, a year older than Brightwell when she won gold, and will join her. Completing the British trio is Alexandra Bell from Leeds, the oldest at 28 and a late call-up after Laura Muir decided she could not attempt the middle-distance double. Kelly Holmes’s win in 2004 is the only home medal in the event since Brightwell, but this is the first time three British women have made the Olympic final.
“There are only eight in it and the medals are there for the taking,” Brightwell said. “The tactics can alter the race completely so they will have to be on the ball and, while experience often counts, Keely Hodgkinson looks pretty fearless. I am thrilled that they are all there. After a dismal 18 months they have given us all a lift.”
The race is one of the last obvious chances for Britain to get on the board with an athletics medal. With Dina Asher-Smith’s injury exposing the lack of depth in the team, they are struggling to beat the previous worst tally, the solitary bronze medal won by Brendan Foster at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
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The trio will not be thinking about the team. Bell was the fastest of the three qualifiers, but is the longest shot. Athing Mu, another 19-year-old, from the United States, has the fastest personal best and fastest time this year in the field at 1min 56.07sec. Jamaica’s Natoya Goule is next fastest in both categories. Reekie and Hodgkinson are fourth and fifth respectively in personal bests and third and fourth in this year’s list of fastest times.
No one in tomorrow’s race has run in an Olympic final and the American Raevyn Rogers’s silver medal from the 2019 World Championships is the highest-calibre finish. The rules regarding testosterone levels and athletes with a DSD (difference of sex development) are controversial but the consequence is that the entire Rio podium — Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui — are absent.
The rules apply to Olympic events ranging from 400m to 1,500m because that is where World Athletics says the evidence of a testosterone advantage is strongest. Niyonsaba’s attempt to move up to the 5,000m ended in more controversy when she was disqualified for stepping outside her lane at the start of her heat. Their absence means this 800m race looks wide open.
Like Brightwell, Coe has been particularly impressed by the manner of Hodgkinson’s runs as much as the times. Coe had to make do with two Olympic 800m silver medals, his coach and father Peter famously saying he had run “like a c***” when finishing second to Steve Ovett in 1980, but he did set two world records.
“What’s nice to see is we have three women in the final and they all have a different approach,” he said. “There is real light at the end of the tunnel when you have three British women in a middle-distance final but the one I have really been impressed with is Keely. We know about Reekie but the maturity for her age that Hodgkinson has shown is impressive. She is what I’d call street smart. She is calm and she is assured and those are really crucial assets in the 800m.
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“I’m not saying they are going to win medals. It’s going to be very tough, but it can help to be so young and have little or no expectations. Whatever happens I have seen enough of her at 19 to know that by Paris in 2024 she will be in the sweet spot. The average age of medallists in middle distance is probably 23 or 24.”
Hodgkinson left it late in her semi-final before a Brightwell-like surge down the home straight to win a semi-final that included Rogers. Already the European indoor champion, people got excited when they analysed Hodgkinson’s win at the UK trials — other than the second 200m she was around world record pace.
Coe says the plot twists in the 800m can be “Byzantine” but predicted where the race would be won. “Doors can suddenly open but it can also go horribly wrong and you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “The one who wins will be the one who keeps calm. It will be decided between 500 and 600 metres in what I call ‘the killing zone’. It will depend on who is prepared to be brave down that back straight.”
Reekie lived with Muir for part of last year and they are training partners. Three weeks ago Muir won the Diamond League race in Monaco with Reekie just adrift. Both were in front of Goule. In Tokyo Reekie has exuded the calmness that Coe craves. “I’m very well known for just running and not thinking about much,” she said. “I don’t look at a clock. I just run. Most of the British team call me ‘the sloth’ because I am so relaxed.”
Mu will start as the favourite and hope to refute the idea that experience is vital in a race where dreams can evaporate in seconds. “Super-talented with a lot of weapons in her armoury,” is Coe’s verdict. Brightwell remains optimistic about home hopes. “I’m sure they have more left in them.”
