Atherton’s Keely Hodgkinson broke the 600m world indoor best today in Manchester with a time of 1:23.41, shaving 3 hundredths of a second off the previous record.
Hodgkinson, 20, is coached by Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows in Wigan and arrived at the Manchester Regional Arena with Meadows’ British record of 1:25.81 as her target.
At least that was what we were told by the meeting organizers before the race, however, Keely thought otherwise.
“It feels pretty good. I didn’t publicize it but I was trying to get that world record, so to do it, I am just happy,” Hodgkinson said to Mancunian Matters.
“Jenny wanted me to break the British record for a couple of years now, and we finally found the time to do a 600. I am just happy to go out and execute what I know I can do.”
She broke Olga Kotlyarova’s former indoor best of 1:23.44 that the Russian set back in 2004.
The silver Olympic medalist opened up her season in what is essentially her home indoor track on her journey to defend her title at the European indoor championships this March in Istanbul
“My family is here, I train here all the time. Usually, I don’t like racing on my home track because I associate it with training and a lot of pain, it just feels weird but today it was a lot of fun.
“We will be doing 800s now, we will race on the circuit and then the European Championships,” she added.
In other events, 19-year-old Medwin Odamtten had a surprise win in the men’s 60m, clocking 6.68s, 0.01s off his PB set in London earlier this month.
Home-favourite Andy Robertson clocked 6.67s in the heats but slowed down mid-way through the final due to what seemed to be lower-back pain.
World relay medalist Reece Prescod ran a 6.60s in the heats, the fastest any Briton has gone this year but chose to pull out of the final.
Isabelle Boffey won the 800m comfortably winning with a time of 2:02.70. Boffey was the world leader of the event until last night following her 2:00.99 performance in Sheffield earlier this month but was overtaken by Slovenian Anita Horvat’s 2:00.44 performance in Germany.
Boffey came back to the track later in the afternoon and paced Hodgkinson to the world record for about 300 metres.
Sale Harrier Reynold Banigo lost the long jump competition on countback to Romania’s Gabriel Bitan, because Bitan had a better second valid mark.
Banigo, a two-time British champion, is based in Leeds and reached the European final last year in Munich.
Silver Commonwealth medalist Naomi Metzger also opened up her season in her hometown in the triple jump.
Metzger’s best jump was measured at 13.32m which was good enough for third place behind Germany’s Caroline Joyeux and Lithuania’s Dovile Kilty.
