Keely Hodgkinson cruises to 800m defence at European Indoor Championships

Keely Hodgkinson entered the European Indoor Championships fully aware of her status as the undisputed favourite, so far ahead of the rest of the field that probably only a mistake could have toppled her. The pressure that comes with excellence did not faze her at all. On Sunday she comfortably defended her European indoor title and further underlined her dominance over the continent.

Having marked her arrival at the top of the sport two years ago by winning her first European Indoor gold medal at 19, Hodgkinson is only the second woman to defend an 800m European indoor title.

Moments later, Jazmin Sawyers, Great Britain’s team captain in Istanbul, produced the performance of her life in the women’s long jump, shocking the field by crossing seven metres for the first time in her career and becoming champion.

“I’ve never won anything,” an exuberant Sawyers told the BBC. “I’m still in shock. I feel like the seven-metre jump has been in me for so long. I have been waiting for this seven metres to come out for ever. It’s been so many years that, for a bit, you start to go: ‘Is it gonna come?’”

Sitting in fourth place, Sawyers produced a spectacular fifth round of exactly 7.00m, obliterating her personal best of 6.90 and securing the world leading jump so far in 2023. The 28-year-old has been around for a long time and she has been made to wait for her moment, and she cited an adjustment in her technique as a reason for her success.

It was a victory made even more meaningful by the quality of opposition in one of the most stacked fields of the entire event. Sawyers saw off Germany’s Malaika Mihambo, the Olympic and world champion, and Serbia’s Ivana Vuleta, the world indoor champion.

“Seven metres is a real jump,” Sawyers