Golden girl Keely Hodgkinson is taking fame in her stride but she must avoid the traps that befell Emma Raducanu Keely Hodgkinson is Great Britain's new golden girl after shining at Paris 2024 The 22-year-old from Wigan has the world at her feet after winning 800m gold Emma Raducanu has built her brand significantly since winning the US Open in 2021 but she has struggled to recreate her best form on the tennis court By Riath Al-samarrai Published: 22:30, 10 August 2024 | Updated: 22:30, 10 August 2024 e-mail View comments The woman who was once the golden girl told me a story about baked beans and Pyrex dishes earlier this week. The conversation had touched on the spoils of victory and the way it was, so the kind of rewards that existed six decades ago for 800metre champions. Suffice to say it was different for Ann Brightwell — Ann Packer back then — from how it will be for Keely Hodgkinson.
'I don't imagine it will be too similar,' Ann told me, and you shouldn't detect any resentment in that, because there is none. She is 82 now and a bundle of fun on any topic, including those concerning the day at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 when she won the 800m gold medal. She was 22 and her fiancé, the late Robbie Brightwell, was the captain of the British athletics team, so when she crossed the finish she ran into his arms for a kiss.
That made all the Japanese papers and a good few at home as well. 'A really lovely fuss,' as she put it. And then came the other prizes.
'I remember when I won I had endorsement work from Heinz — "Golden Girl, Golden Beans" — and Bovril. 'It wasn't like it will be today, but I was very happy. The Bovril endorsement helped me and Robbie to furnish our home.
' Keely Hodgkinson, 22, pictured earlier this week after winning gold in the women's 800m Robbie and Ann Brightwell pictured in 1964 - the year they both won Olympic medals in Tokyo The Pyrex dishes came from other races. She got three of them for some win or other, along with various saucepans and tea sets, but one of those dishes was broken years ago and another was misplaced in a recent move to downsize her house. 'We got a lot of use from them,' she said, and it was the warmest of laughs she sent down the line.
There was no pun intended when Ann said Monday night had left her 'full of beans', because Hodgkinson just has that effect on people. She is a wonderful runner and a free spirit, and the latter speaks to a fun soul whose breakthrough to a silver medal in Tokyo three years ago was accompanied by a story she told of trying to boil milk in a kettle. Her possibilities seem endless at this point in time, now that silver, and so many other medals of the same shade, have been upgraded to gold.
Indeed, it would take an obscenely pessimistic individual to impose limits on this 22-year-old's athletic potential and we might say the same for the commercial opportunities coming her way. By all accounts big offers are already in the pipeline, with dialogues under way. And to go by a chat I had with someone close to Hodgkinson this week, we're not talking about yoghurt companies and small-scale tie-ins more common to British track athletes, but giants.
Major fashion brands, high-end cosmetic chains, luxury watch companies, large retailers — they all want to attach themselves to her name and her image. Hodgkinson won the women's 800m final in a time of 1:56.72 at Stade de France on Monday After the race, Hodgkinson held up a crown in one hand and the Union Jack flag in the other It makes me think of Emma Raducanu, to use a fresh and somewhat predictable example from the post-Pyrex dish era.
Like Raducanu, Hodgkinson has what marketing folk call cut-through. She goes beyond the boundaries of her sport and she travels outside the borders of her country as well, because audiences in Italy and France have evidently taken an interest in this luminous talent from Wigan. They see what we see, and what we all see is a relatable person with an unrelatable gift.
For me, watching her at the Stade de France on Monday was an exhibition in how to handle expectations. It was a masterclass in how to embrace pressure when others feel it like a foot on the throat; a clinic in how to deliver when your audience is so sure you're going to win. When we say you must.
Almost every day since that golden run has come proof of how hard that is — neither Josh Kerr nor Jakob Ingebrigtsen left with 1500m gold on Tuesday. Matt Hudson-Smith was favourite for the 400m on Wednesday, right up until the last five metres. On Thursday, Noah Lyles, the self-styled greatest, took bronze in the 200m having not lost in 26 previous races at the distance.
There are no gimmes in an Olympic final and Paris 2024 has been a delightful carnage for its inversions of conventional wisdom. But Hodgkinson moulded the occasion to her will — the field became actors in her stage play. Her extras.
Her ensemble. But there could be only one star and she ensured it was her. Only her.
It takes a special athlete to do that and Hodgkinson is so special, and so young, she could end up being more special in the business of middle-distance running than Seb Coe over the fullness of her career. Naturally, you can see the 'but' coming here, because we'll return to Raducanu at this stage. Hodgkinson's biggest challenge is to do a more effective job of managing the factors imposed by fame and the brands that will make her rich.
They will present a wonderful fantasy land but one that is accessible over a highwire where the day job is concerned. I tend to see Raducanu's difficulties across the past three years, since the US Open and her fairytale of New York, as a consequence of injury more than anything else. But there have been distinct times when the candle has had burn marks at both ends.
Alas, tennis and 800m running are equally unforgiving as pursuits if the balance becomes skewed. Emma Raducanu won the women's singles title at the US Open as a teenager back in 2021 But Raducanu has not gone beyond the fourth round at a Grand Slam since her famous win My picks of a memorable Games With the Olympics drawing to a close, you can hear the sound of football's thundering hooves as it seeks to resume its ravenous consumption of sporting airtime. Before it gets here, a few personal highlights from a brilliant Games: ● Simone Biles and her acts of flight during her gold-medal showing at the all-around.
The kind of athlete that provokes a sense of awe and the creation of new swear words. ● Alex Yee appearing in first place around the final bend of the triathlon at a point when all of us covering it were fixated on delayed footage that showed him at risk of slipping to third. ● Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen's magnificent obsession with one another and how it ultimately proved their undoing.
The Olympics fosters madness like no other stage. ● Dan Evans charging around Roland Garros at considerable personal cost to give Andy Murray just one more game of tennis. A good man.
● The sight of Thomas Bach, IOC president, squirming around issues of difficulty from gender rows to doping. He's a buffoon and his big party always brings the unintended consequence of exposing him. ● Keely Hodgkinson's gold after all that silver and Katarina Johnson-Thompson's silver after all those Olympic nightmares.
Different medals, both wins. ● Mohamed Aly, the greatest. Every Olympics throws up multiple chances to be surprised by the unknown, and the mad goalkeeper of Egypt's handball team was the one that got me.
Possibly the most captivating of the 10,714 athletes in Paris. Advertisement I don't see that happening with Hodgkinson. I see an easier ride, because athletics has so few dates of prominence in the calendar, meaning less scrutiny and sneering, but I also see an athlete who just keeps striding along and having the time of her life.
I see a talent whose next acts might well include the breaking of a 41-year-old world record. I see a British woman whose success in Paris was no surprise whatsoever, so much as an ascension to the next step on a podium. Now that she's there, the rewards will exceed Pyrex dishes, Bovril and baked beans.
That highwire can look awfully thin when you have so much in your hands, but Hodgkinson has proven herself pretty good on her feet when expectations are deafening. Emma Raducanu Olympics Share or comment on this article: Golden girl Keely Hodgkinson is taking fame in her stride but she must avoid the traps that befell Emma Raducanu e-mail Add comment.
