Keely Hodgkinson has dismissed the Enhanced Games as “nonsense” and underlined the need to respect athletes who remain clean and lean on “hard work” to achieve results instead of banned substances.
The highly-anticipated and controversial event unfolded in Las Vegas last Sunday with just one performance bettering, but not breaking, an existing world record.
While sprinter Fred Kerley triumphed in the 100m in a time of 9.97secs, which would have failed to qualify for the Paris Olympics final, an event he claimed an impressive bronze medal in a time of 9.81secs, though he was since been issued with a two-year ban by the United States Anti-Doping Agency after whereabouts failures last year.
And after the start of the Diamond League season, with Hodgkinson scheduled to open her outdoor campaign in the 400m in Rome next Thursday, the 24-year-old hit out at Enhanced Games for contradicting the ethics of clean sport.
“I think it is just having an appreciation for the hard work and dedication that we put in,” Hodgkinson remarked when asked about the event. “I think the sport has done a great job over the last couple of decades of making it a clean sport.
“I do trust the people that I race against, and it’s not a thought in my brain that I think about, so yeah, we will call that thing nonsense, because that’s what it was.
“But yeah, I just think appreciation for the athletics and all that, all the work you put in, day in and day out to be down the line.”
Hodgkinson has also confirmed her place in the Diamond League stop at the Novuna London Athletics Meet in July, with a tilt at an women’s 800m outdoor world record on the cards after a superb run of training has banished memories of an injury-ravaged 2025 season.
Hodgkinson will have to beat Jarmila Kratochvilova’s mark of 1:53.28, with her own personal best currently standing at 1:54.61.
“Yeah, obviously, I would love to have that happen on home soil, and like I’ve said, I get really excited about London, and like there’s just the whole crowd and I think as a British person competing there is just so much fun, and it’s definitely like the main thing I’m looking forward to this year on the calendar. Might be about all of the world records, these can get a better one,” Hodgkinson said. “
“I think we obviously have a plan A of what we would like to happen. Obviously, we know the sport is has its own plans sometimes, and it’s not something that you can straight away plan and think, yeah, let’s do this, like if I happen to come into shape where I think I want to go, it’s sooner or it happens to be a bit later in the season, that could just be how it goes, so far the preparation has gone very, very well, I’m very happy with where I’m at, building on the indoor season that we’ve had, and I’m really happy that I’ve been healthy for a year now, so that’s really fun.
“I’ve not missed a training session, so I’m in a really, really good place. We’ve got ideas of what we want to do in Stockholm, and then going on to Pre. It’s kind of hard as well, because there’s obviously other people in the race, and I want to respect them, and also make sure that I win these races too. So, there’s a lot to consider, but yeah, we’ll just see how I kind of split the season up into two halves in my mind. It’s I kind of like do the Diamond League season, get to London, then the second half comes with all the championships and Birmingham and things like that, that I’m excited about.”
Keely Hodgkinson will be competing in the Diamond League at the Novuna London Athletics Meet at the London Stadium on 18 July – tickets available here
