'Built differently' - Hodgkinson reveals hamstring abnormality

Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson says an MRI scan has uncovered an "abnormality" in her hamstring.

Following a suspected tear last year, Hodgkinson had a scan which revealed she has a "split" hamstring, giving her two tendons instead of one.

The 24-year-old is still learning how to manage the anomaly, which allows her to continue running when one of the tendons is torn but may also make her more susceptible to breakdowns.

Following her second-place finish to Swiss Audrey Werro in the 800m final at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest in September, Hodgkinson announced she had sustained another hamstring tear at the European Championships in Birmingham a few weeks earlier.

"My body is quite literally built differently," said Hodgkinson. "Where most people have one tendon, mine is split - I have two - and we're trying to figure out if it's a strength or a weakness.

"So when one of them tore, I still had another one because it's split. In Birmingham, it didn't affect me during the race, but I could feel something wasn't quite right.

"It's a weird one. You can still run on them. I haven't missed any training the last three weeks. But I've just had to alter my approach. I've had to take my foot off the speed [training], because that's when it's most risky."

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Hodgkinson has endured two injury-plagued seasons since winning Olympic gold in Paris in 2024, waiting for more than a year to race again after suffering a hamstring injury the following February.

Impressing on her return in August 2025 with back-to-back Diamond League wins, she went on to set a new indoor 800m world record in February 2026 before winning gold at the World Indoor Championships a month later.

However, she has been unable to replicate that form outdoors, suffering three defeats by Werro, including losing her European crown to the 22-year-old.

Hodgkinson has since said she suffered a freak injury while jogging along a canal during a warm-down session, sustaining cuts to both knees and whiplash-like jarring in her back which have made the past few months a "battle".

But, while acknowledging that the fall could have contributed to her injury at the European Championships - which ruled her out of Diamond League meets in Zurich and Brussels - she stressed she is not making excuses.

"Part of me wants to talk about it and then part of me doesn't, because I feel like my words get twisted or people are like 'oh, she's making excuses'," Hodgkinson said.

"Going into the Europeans, I thought I was in the best shape ever. But when I fell over, that kind of messed me up way more than I thought it did. I think that's what contributed to my hamstring, because I couldn't really use my quad for a while."

Speaking after her defeat by Werro at the Ultimate Championship, Hodgkinson described 2026 as "frustrating" but remained optimistic: "Overall, I'm finishing second in the world and I can't really be too hard on myself for that."

Hodgkinson will end her 2026 season in London at the all-female Athlos event, launched by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, on Friday.

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