Keely Hodgkinson has a habit of being late but on Monday the British runner was right on time as she was crowned 800 metres Olympic champion — a remarkable achievement given at one point in her life she could not walk.
The 22-year-old buried a reputation for being always the bridesmaid and never the bride as she stormed to victory, becoming the first British woman to win gold in the event since Kelly Holmes in Athens in 2004.
Her habit of being late is one of her rare failings but Trevor Painter, who coaches her along with his wife, Jenny Meadows, says he is not going to tell her to change.
“Sometimes it’s 20 to 25 minutes late and she just strolls in smiling, ‘Whatever,'” Painter told Women’s Health. “But if we contain her, put her in a box and tell her she’s got to conform to this, she’ll not be the person we saw run 1 minute 54.61 seconds in London (a British record at the Diamond League meeting last month). “That kind of free-spirited nature makes her who she is.”
Hodgkinson battled back from being incapacitated in her early teens by a non-cancerous tumour in an ear. “It had grown for 10 years and no one had spotted it,” she told the Guardian.