Keely Hodgkinson shows her Klassic formula can inspire new generation

After winning an Olympic 800m gold medal and the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award, Keely Hodgkinson set herself a bold new challenge: getting a whole new generation of fans into track and field. Foolish? Brave? Or visionary? The sceptics and gatekeepers certainly had their doubts. But the sight of hundreds of teenage and young girls dancing to Taylor Swift, Rosé and Bruno Mars, and Psy’s Gangnam Style in between races at her brand new event, the Keely Klassic, was quite the riposte.

Normally an athletics event in the UK feels a bit like a vicarage tea party. This felt more like being on the Road to Damascus. This observer has certainly never seen a British athletics crowd as young or engaged. What made it even more remarkable still was that Hodgkinson, who was intending to go for the 800m short-track world record, was not competing having injured her hamstring during the week. The races themselves were largely made up of British athletes rather than star names.

It helped that organisers had brought in the DJ Tony Perry, who had previously warmed up fans at the 2024 Champions League final and 21 matches during the 2022 World Cup, into the infield. It meant that when the athletes weren’t tearing around the track at the Utilita Arena, there was music and dancing to keep the 4,000 crowd – which was young and largely female – engaged. Hodgkinson and the other athletes also played their part by signing autographs and posing for selfies.

“The gold medal has enabled me to put on events like this and to bring a new generation to the sport to enjoy watching it,” said Hodgkinson. “It’s so amazing to hear the stories from little girls and boys who watched me perform in Paris. That’s what really inspires me.”. But this was really about the Keely effect in action. When she won gold in Paris she was watched by 9.1 million people in the UK – more than anyone else at the Olympics.

It all made the BBC’s decision to relegate the event to the iPlayer even more puzzling – especially as it opted to show reruns of Flog It! and the film Mr Malcolm’s List, which it had aired as recently as October 2024, instead. The athletics’ record books will show that this was a day where the Olympic bronze medallist Georgia Hunter Bell held off Irish star Sarah Healy to win the women’s 1500m in 4min 0.65sec – while Lina Nielsen and Neil Gourley set British records in the women’s 300m and men’s 1,000m. But the overriding memory was of how different everything was.

“It felt like a really fun atmosphere,” said Hunter Bell. “When we came out everyone was dancing, so it was a bit different to the usual meet.”. Meanwhile, Jessica Lalley, who travelled from Liverpool with her daughter Faye, 15, and stepdaughter Grace, 14, summed up the mood. Sign up to The Recap. The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s action.

after newsletter promotion. “We bought tickets just to see Keely, so when she got injured we were a little disappointed,” she said. “But it turned out to be a brilliant event. The atmosphere was absolutely superb, and we even won prizes for getting our entire row up and dancing.”. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. Hodgkinson is the best female sports star in the country. She has 528,000 followers on Instagram. And she combines extraordinary talent with Gen Z mentality.

Afterwards the 22-year-old expressed her delight at the event before revealing that she was aiming to compete again in June. “At the moment it is going to be June, but maybe it will be earlier,” she said. “Perhaps in May, but I am not sure. “I’ve been told I’ll be able to start running again in three to six weeks but my body has a tendency to heal quite quickly so I’m hoping it will be two or three weeks. I’m not worried. After that, I’ll just be building up to that 800m at the world championships in Tokyo.”.