From the Milan Fashion Week in September to pottery painting in Sale, Keely Hodgkinson is fast discovering the magical currency of an Olympic track gold medal.

Next stop is the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year but it would take something pretty unusual in Manchester on Tuesday night – where she does intend to debut a special new outfit – to surpass what she rates as her “craziest” post-Paris moment.

“I’m probably going to say when I met Giorgio Armani,” says Hodgkinson, recalling her invitation to the Emporio Armani fashion show, and how the 90-year-old made a point of introducing himself to the select group of Olympians in attendance.

“He came over to me and he put his hand on my cheek and called me ‘Bella’ [beautiful in Italian], which I thought was really nice. He can’t speak English, but he’s quite into sport. It was just quite funny because he’s this powerful, small man… he’s a lot older now… but he looks great.

“He’s still heavily involved in his work, and I think that was a really cool moment. They flew me out. I sat front row at the fashion show – had lots of dinners. The trip was absolutely amazing.”

Special outfit for Sports Personality

Hodgkinson is not herself sponsored by Armani but did get to keep her clothes from the trip and has been planning her look for the BBC’s big annual celebration of the sporting year. “I don’t know if I can say what I’m going to wear yet – but it’s an exciting collaboration that’s quite new – hopefully everyone likes it,” she says.

Alongside Armani, there have also been appearances at the London Fashion Week for Burberry, at the National Television Awards and several magazine cover shoots since she last ran competitively in August, as well as a new tattoo behind her ear.

The words ‘amour’ and ‘Paris’ have discreetly joined the ‘Tokyo’ [in Japanese] that went on her arm following silver in 2021. “I prefer getting the little ones to the [Olympic] rings – I think that’s just a bit more me,” she says. “The Paris one behind my ear, you can’t really see. It’s just a nice reminder of this summer.”

Having previously only found herself being recognised in an athletics environment, a 9.1 million live BBC television audience for the Olympic 800 metres final has also ensured a growing number of encounters with random well-wishers. “One time I was pottery painting in a little cafe in Sale,” she says. “A woman came in and was like: ‘Are you the runner?’ I’ve had quite a few nice moments of parents and kids coming over and saying they really enjoyed the Olympics, so it’s been nice.”

Hodgkinson has not so far added to a deliberately selective cast of sponsors and it is noticeable that her forays into fashion were largely confined to a slightly extended six-week off-season window following a knee injury. October, November and December have since been spent training in the mountains of France and South Africa. She only returned to Manchester over the weekend but will be back in South Africa soon after Christmas and, free of last winter’s injury problems, has big objectives for the indoor season.

World record target

The world record of 1min 53.28sec certainly looks attainable and, unusually, there are both European and World Indoor Championships over the space of a fortnight in March. It is also a World Championship year outdoors in 2025. “I look to hopefully compete in all three of them – and hopefully come away with a gold in all of them,” she says.

A major goal is Jarmila Kratochvilova’s world outdoor 800m record, which was set in 1983 and remains the longest standing track record of all, and Hodgkinson also intends to run in one of the four new Grand Slam Track League events. As well as her usual 800m distance, that will mean making her first outing since 2018 over 1500m. With her cross-country background, it is a distance that she may ultimately move to more seriously and improving a 4min 29sec personal best would seem assured.

“I do train to be able to run a decent 1500m; if I get in a good race with some good girls, hopefully I could be pulled around to a pretty decent time,” she says. The overriding priority, though, will be adding to a medal collection that at the age of 22 already stands at nine in major senior competition.

“Medals can never be taken away from you – and I don’t have a World Championship gold yet,” she says. “For me, the times will come as long as I can train consistently, get myself in really good shape. I do think the 1.53 [outdoor world record] is possible. I think we’re so close to getting down there, but obviously it takes a special race – perfect shape, perfect conditions – to come together. It could happen next year. It could happen the year after that. It could take three years. But I will definitely put myself in the best position.”

Hearing Hodgkinson talk with such relish about the upcoming on-track objectives feels particularly encouraging following the feelings of depression when, aged 19 in 2021, she was the shock winner of an Olympic silver medal.

What athletes call the ‘Olympic comedown’ can be a surprisingly common and significant challenge but, with the help of a psychologist, Hodgkinson has found fresh perspective.

She often now says that ‘pressure is a privilege’ and wants to enjoy the opportunities and embrace the expectation that now follows her. Outside athletics and the occasional fashion shoot, Hodgkinson’s time is centred on her family and friends as well as learning new skills like pottery painting and playing the piano.

“I would still say the biggest transition was the Tokyo year, because that was a real shock,” she now says. “I think I was definitely a bit more prepared for it the second time around. I do get recognised a lot more. Opportunities have come from that kind of success. That’s the difference. I think it’s really exciting.”

Should she be crowned Sports Personality of the Year, Hodgkinson would be the fourth successive female winner and continue a great tradition for athletics, beginning with Sir Chris Chataway in 1954 through to Sir Mo Farah in 2017.

“I did watch it growing up,” she says. “I mainly loved obviously supporting the fellow athletics people. The season ended better than I ever could have thought. It’s the first time where I’ve actually achieved everything I’ve set out to on the outdoor track, which doesn’t happen very often in people’s careers.

“It’s an honour that my achievements have been put forward as something that Britain loved to watch. It’s nice to get that recognition and hopefully join a nice long list of some of Britain’s greatest achievers in this award.”

Odds-on favourite to win Sports Personality

If the bookmakers are to be believed, Hodgkinson is in a straight race on Tuesday with the teenage darts sensation Luke Littler for the overall Spoty crown. Littler seemed unsure who Hodgkinson was when asked last month and, despite growing up and living within a few miles of each other, the unfamiliarity is evidently mutual.

“I don’t really watch darts – I’ll be honest,” says Hodgkinson. “But he [Littler] seems to have a lot of followers and a lot of fans and a lot of people backing him. He seems like he has a long career ahead of him, so I wish him all the best.”

One Spoty contender she will be closely following is Trevor Painter, her coach since 2019 who also guided Georgia Bell and Lewis Davey to respective Olympic medals in the women’s 1500m and men’s 4x400m relay.

Past winners of the BBC’s Coach of the Year prize include Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Sir Clive Woodward, Sir Dave Brailsford, Arsène Wenger and Enzo Calzaghe. “I’m not sure of any other coach this year that has put forward as much as he has, getting three Olympic medals within our training group,” says Hodgkinson. “He just creates such a fun environment for us all that makes us want to keep coming and working hard. It would be even better than me winning it to be honest. He deserves it so much.”

Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee to take on London Marathon

After gambling on a Nick Faldo-style overhaul of his swimming technique with just 18 months until the Paris Olympics, Alex Yee has already successfully demonstrated the courage to follow an untrodden path.

And that will go a stage further in 2025 when, having so dramatically won triathlon Olympic gold in Paris last summer, he will take on one of the great challenges of British sport: The London Marathon.

It is a decision that will reverberate through endurance running, particularly as Yee was fast enough as a junior to beat reigning 1500m world champion Josh Kerr and Britain’s current marathon king Emile Cairess in national cross-country races. Yee also finished only narrowly behind Cairess three winters ago during his last individual athletics outing at the national cross country championships on Parliament Hill.

Yee, who is on the six-strong shortlist for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year on Tuesday night, stresses that he will be approaching the London Marathon over the next 18 weeks with the same diligence as any past achievement in triathlon. “Taking part in a full marathon has always been an itch I’ve wanted to scratch and there isn’t any other place that I would want to start that journey,” said the reigning world and Olympic triathlon champion.

Yee has been based and coached in Loughborough over the past five years by Adam Elliott, who told The Telegraph that the 26-year-old’s humility and love of a gruelling 35-hour-a-week training schedule set him apart. “He does it for enjoyment – he just happens to be incredibly good,” said Elliott. “And his ability to action feedback, and to take it at face value and not take it as criticism, is exceptional.”

Asked for an example, Elliott revealed how, even after winning Olympic silver in Tokyo, Yee was willing to take a step backwards and risk major change in search of further improvement. It was a process reminiscent of how Faldo dismantled his golf swing in the 1980s before returning to become the best player in the world.

“Once we knew the course, and knew the demands of the swim, we sat down probably 18 months out from Paris and said his swim was unlikely to be good enough to make that front pack, both technically and physiologically,” recalled Elliott. “We had a pretty frank conversation: ‘OK, it’s not good enough, what are we prepared to do?’ And his answer was: ‘We do what needs to be done’.

“We went through a pretty fundamental rebuild of his stroke which is a pretty brave thing to do 18 months out from an Olympics. I’m not sure how many athletes would be confident enough, self assured enough and also trust the people around them enough.

“Then you saw his ability to learn and develop come to the fore – just to turn up every day and invest the time and energy in skill development. It genuinely wasn’t about an Olympic gold medal – it was about walking off that race and being able to say, ‘I’ve done everything I can’. I honestly believe that, if it was 10th, he would have been happy.”

Elliott also pinpoints Yee’s calmness in Paris to initially let his gold-medal rival Hayden Wilde build a lead during the final 10km run. “It would have been very easy to get panicked and push harder – it was testament to his mental strength and that is absolutely something he has worked upon,” said Elliott, who was himself stationed out on the course down the Champs Elysees. It made for a surreal moment when, in his ear piece, he was hearing about the dramatic finale while watching delayed pictures that told a very different story.

“I was told in my ear that Alex was going past Hayden, but on the screen he was behind. I was, ‘no, I don’t think that is happening’. But they were, ‘no, it’s happened and he is about to win it’. There was a moment of disbelief and then a moment of elation that suddenly came from nowhere.”