Keely Hodgkinson escapes boredom to lift British spirits at world championships
Olympic champion and Hunter Bell into 800m semis
Max Burgin breezes into Saturday’s men’s 800m final
It has not been the greatest world championships for Britain so far, with only Jake Wightman’s 1500m silver medal lifting the gloom. But on Thursday the cavalry finally arrived in the form of Keely Hodgkinson.
The Olympic 800m champion has been so bored in her hotel in the 35c heat she has even taken to staging playful indoor races with her training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell. But she dusted off the cobwebs in qualifying comfortably for Friday’s semi-finals in 1min 59.79sec. “I don’t like the rounds,” she said. “They feel awful. It was not pretty or fast tonight but I am safely through.”