21-year-old Keely Hodgkinson won silver in the women’s 800m category after Kenya’s Mary Moraa clinched the gold medal at the 2023 World Athletics Championship.
Kenyan Moraa won with a personal best of 1:56.03 as defending champion Athing Mu took bronze in a tightly-contested battle.
Olympic silver medallist Hodgkinson, who missed out on last year’s 800m world title to Athing Mu by a painful 0.08secs in Eugene, tried to catch up with Moraa, but she couldn’t.
Moraa, who had won the bronze medal in 2022, jumped excitedly as she clinched hold on the world stage.
American superstar Mu, also 21, repeated her Tokyo Olympics triumph over Hodgkinson by the narrowest of margins in Eugene last year before 23-year-old Moraa inflicted Commonwealth Games heartbreak.
Hodgkinson won her first major outdoor gold at the European Championships last August and improved her British record to 1:55.77 this season – still the fastest time in the world this year.
Speaking on her performance, Keely said;
“To be consistently at the top with the best of the world is all I want with my career,” Hodgkinson said.
“Another podium. Another medal. So that’s definitely a positive.”
She added: “I did think I was going to come through on the inside and then the line just came quicker than I thought it would.
“I gave it my all like I always do. I don’t really think I put a foot wrong.”
