The applause for Keely Hodgkinson was still reverberating around Media City on Tuesday when this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year began to stare intently at the previous winners carved into the trophy. “I started to read the names and you realise it is history right in front of you: Bobby Moore, Mary Rand, Linford Christie, it goes all the way back to 1954,” she said.
But one detail, more than anything, stood out. The Olympic 800m champion’s victory was a record-breaking fourth in a row for a woman, following tennis player Emma Raducanu in 2021 and the footballers Beth Mead and Mary Earps in 2022 and 2023 respectively. “It shows that women’s sport in the UK is in a good place, really strong in quite a lot of areas,” Hodgkinson said.
It is certainly a far cry from a desperate stretch between 2007 and 2020 when a male athlete not only lifted the award every year, but only five women – the swimmer Rebecca Adlington, the athletes Jessica Ennis-Hill, Jo Pavey and Dina Asher-Smith and the jockey Hollie Doyle – made the podium.
However, do not be surprised if this run continues in 2025, especially with England defending their Women’s Euros title and the Women’s Rugby World Cup held on home soil. What price rugby’s Ellie Kildunne being on next year’s shortlist?
Do not count out Hodgkinson being a repeat winner either. She celebrated her Spoty victory with nothing stronger than a water at the aftershow party as she knew she was facing a hard training session on Wednesday. For her, Paris was merely the launchpad for her ambitions.
It was telling that after her victory, the president of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, lauded her in the highest possible terms. “I’d be hard pushed to place any female British athlete significantly above her in the history of our sport in the last 50 years,” he said. “You don’t win the Europeans and an Olympics and effectively smash a national record without being a legend.”
Intriguingly, Hodgkinson does not completely agree with his assessment. “I still think there is so much to do,” she said. “There are so many milestones to hit. How many titles can you get, how many medals can you win? I don’t know what the record is for Britain. I just want to keep building on what I’ve already done.
Another sign of her growing status is that in February she will have a new athletics event named after her – the Keely Klassic. It could start with a bang as she intends to break the indoor 800m world record in Birmingham. In a neat act of symmetry that record of 1 min 55.82sec was set by Jolanda Ceplak of Slovenia on 3 March 2002, the day Hodgkinson was born.
“Track over the years has got a bit lost with all the football in this country,” she says. “So we are trying to bring more eyes to track and field, especially my generation. Hopefully it will be a really fun event. I have big ambitions with it. We just hope the public like it as well.
I love to inspire people, whether it’s to watch it, try it, get them off the couch for their mental health. It’s a great opportunity for that.”
If anyone has a chance of flipping people’s perceptions of athletics it is Hodgkinson, who has the talent and personality to burrow even deeper into the mainstream. Shortly after stepping off the Spoty stage, for instance, she revealed her phone alarm had gone off just as the winners were being announced.
“It was really embarrassing,” she said, laughing, before explaining she sets an alarm for 9pm every day to remind her to update her whereabouts for drug testers and forgot to turn it off.
Hodgkinson is also disarmingly honest about how life is not always rosy when you are trying to be the best in the world. “Everyone has moments of weakness,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t have any. Last week I was upset mid-session because it was so hard and I was so tired. You’ve got to really dig deep on those days. But I have learned to take it week by week and goal by goal.”
No matter how tough it gets her coaches, Trevor Meadows and Jenny Painter – who won the BBC’s coaching award on Tuesday – say that the values of hard work and a desire to win, instilled by her parents, Dean and Rachel, always shine through.
“What we have learned about Keely is that she knows when it is time to knuckle down and she is never going to lose that drive and determination,” said Meadows, a former Team GB middle-distance mainstay. “She wants to be a legend of the sport and she wants to win again in LA. I think only when she has won another gold medal will she look back and think: ‘Ah, I’ve done well.’”
That speaks volumes about Hodgkinson’s insatiable desire to win. And the good news for British sport is that, at 22, she is just getting started.
Spoty numbers crunched
Female winners in a row of Sports Personality of the Year – a new record – after Keely Hodgkinson scooped the top prize on Tuesday. Emma Raducanu began the streak with her incredible US Open victory in 2021, Beth Mead won a year later after England’s triumph in the Women’s Euros and goalkeeper Mary Earps followed in 2023 when the Lionesses made it to the World Cup final.
Female winners of Spoty since its inception in 1954. Men have won it 54 times, with just one mixed award – Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1984. England tops the list of winners by nationality with 55, Scotland are next with seven, including Andy Murray’s three victories that put him top of the individual list, Wales have five, Northern Ireland two and the Isle of Man one – Mark Cavendish in 2011.
Most female winners in a row before this year: the swimmer Anita Lonsbrough in 1962, followed by the athletes Dorothy Hyman in 1963 and Mary Rand in 1964. The last time there were back-to-back female winners before the current streak was 1971 and 1972 when Mary Peters followed Princess Anne, whose daughter Zara Phillips went on to win the award herself in 2006.
Spoty winners from the world of athletics, by far the most victories by any sport in the award’s 71 editions. Formula one is next with eight (Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart once each, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Lewis Hamilton twice each), followed by football and tennis (seven each) and cricket, boxing and cycling (five).
