Even by Keely Hodgkinson’s standards this was astonishing. The Olympic 800m gold medallist had not raced for 376 days due to a series of hamstring problems. Yet on a blistering hot day in Poland she marked her return by destroying a quality field in 1min 54.74sec – the fastest time in the world this year by nearly two seconds.
Hodgkinson’s effort was also the ninth fastest in history and it was perfect timing, given the world championships in Tokyo starts in a month.
Behind her, Odira took second in a personal best of 1:56.52 with Nowe third in a national record of 1:56.72. But it was a measure of the race that there were seven personal bests and two season’s bests across the field.
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Elsewhere, Faith Kipyegon narrowly missed out on an attempt on the 3,000m world record set by China’s Wang Junxia in 1993. Kipyegon had been on course to break it with a kilometre to go but slowed to finish in 8:07.04 – less than a second behind Wang’s mark.
In the women’s 1500m, Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell finished third in 3:56.00 behind Gudaf Tsegay, who ran 3:50.52.
