KEELY HODGKINSON’S year-long absence from athletics could work in her favour when she tries to add a world title to her Olympic gold this week.

A hamstring tear sustained in February followed by a couple of setbacks meant Hodgkinson was kept out of action from her crowning moment at Paris 2024 to a Diamond League meeting in Silesia last month.

But the 23-year-old marked her return by setting the fastest time of 2025 in the women’s 800 metres to show she is still the person to beat ahead of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, which start this week.

Hodgkinson has made no secret of wanting to set a new world record, currently held by Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova, who recorded a time of one minute 53.28 seconds 42 years ago.

Hodgkinson’s personal best, which she set in London in July last year, is 1.33 seconds slower but Dame Denise Lewis, speaking in her new role as England Golf ambassador, insisted Kratochvilova’s benchmark is not out of reach.

“I know it’s extremely difficult but with technology, the right mindset, the right race, the right conditions, she’s talented enough to do it,” Lewis, the 2000 Olympic heptathlon champion, said.

Katarina Johnson-Thompson is another British medal hope in Japan in the heptathlon and she will once again go up against Belgium’s Nafi Thiam, who pipped the Liverpudlian to Olympic gold last year by a wafer-thin margin of 36 points.

It was Thiam’s third successive Olympic title, but Lewis feels the pair will face stiff competition from Anna Hall, whose 7,032 points in Gotzis this year has only ever been bettered by one person.

“Kat was very close last year in Paris, painfully close,” Lewis added. “Nafi is a formidable one because she has the ability to come into championships cold, with not much form at all and just leave everyone speechless.

“Kat knows she’s beatable — that I really do believe — but they are going to face a lot more of a challenge with Anna. She’s yet to get a global gold and I think that keeps you hungry.”