From Olympic underdog to golden expectations

Nobody was more stunned than the British teenager on the Tokyo track. Keely Hodgkinson stood with her eyes and mouth wide open in astonishment, hands fixed either side of a head dizzied by two laps that had changed everything. An Olympic underdog three years ago, she has become one of the gold medal favourites at Paris 2024. "It's quite a privileged position to be in," Hodgkinson tells BBC Sport. "It's exciting but a little bit daunting, and a very different position to what I was in last time." At the last Olympics, Hodgkinson was 19. Tokyo 2020 was an opportunity which may not have happened had the Games not been postponed by 12 months by the Covid-19 pandemic. She would seize it in extraordinary fashion, breaking Kelly Holmes' 26-year British record to clinch 800m silver on her debut at a major outdoor championships. A whirlwind three years have followed for the reigning European champion, whose initial look of disappointment at winning her second successive world silver in Budapest last summer spoke volumes of the ambition she holds for Paris and beyond. "I'm still young but there was no pressure then, whereas now I feel like I have a little bit to live up to," Hodgkinson says. "Being chased rather than being the one chasing is a harder position to be in but I enjoy the pressure, to be honest."