Women’s Middle-Distance Preview

800m

My pick: Keely Hodgkinson

I haven’t won silver medals at the last three global championships, but if I had, I’d be especially keen on picking up a gold one this time around.

Keely Hodgkinson is Great Britain’s best chance at a gold medal on the track in Paris, and the three-time silver medallist is taking that role very seriously. Undefeated in the 800m this year, Hodgkinson’s average finish time would put her at fourth on the 2024 rankings. Her 1:54.61 world-leading victory from the London Diamond League a couple of weeks ago is the sixth fastest time in history, but once you take out performances from non-biological women and the drug-fuelled Soviet Union athletes of the 80s, she moves up to second.

The last two World Championship 800m podiums have been shared by the same three women, and coming into 2024, many thought that picture would emerge again in Paris. However, Athing Mu tripped at the U.S. national trials and didn’t make the team, which has led many American fans to pre-emptively put an asterisk next to the winning performance in Paris.

While Mu is the reigning Olympic champion, her chances of successfully defending that title were slim and claiming that Hodgkinson only has a shot at the gold because of Mu’s absence is a disservice to her amazing season. What’s more, Mu’s most recent outing saw her place fifth behind four unqualified women and fail to break two minutes, while Hodgkinson’s saw her beat a strong international field and run faster than Mu’s lifetime best.

So, when you’re hanging out in a sports bar next week discussing the women’s 800m Olympic final (which is a classic sports bar topic of conversation, by the way), and someone says, “All credit to Keely, but remember that Athing wasn’t there,” you can safely ignore them. Hodgkinson is the fastest woman in the world this year by a whole second, has convincingly won all six of her races in 2024, and will start in Paris as the deserving favourite.

Keely Hodgkinson wins the 800m at the Prefontaine Classic

The Challengers

Mary Moraa

The only other woman to have appeared on the last two global 800m podiums is reigning world champion Mary Moraa. Unlike Mu, Moraa will be in Paris, but Kenyan fans may have to look to the longer distances to find a gold medal performance. Moraa is the fourth fastest in the world this year, but that still puts her more than two seconds behind Hodgkinson. Throw in the fact that the Kenyan lost to her British counterpart at the Prefontaine Classic and was then upstaged at her national trials, and it quickly becomes clear that Moraa is not the same athlete she was 12 months ago. You can never count out the reigning world champion, but you also can’t automatically call her the favourite: Hodgkinson has beaten Moraa more times than not, has a faster season’s best, a faster personal best, and a better record at the Olympics.

Phoebe Gill

At just 17, Phoebe Gill qualified for Team GB by winning the U.K. championships and extending her unbeaten streak in 2024. While she only sits at 14th on the yearly rankings, it’s harder to take her season’s best at face value because she’s won every race: athletes almost always run faster when they have someone to chase, and Gill simply hasn’t been threatened this year. Of course, that will change in Paris, so it will be interesting to see how the young Briton responds to the added pressure of the Olympic stage. If she does manage to find her way to the podium, she will be the youngest individual track medallist in Olympic history.

Phoebe Gill wins the 800m at the U.K. national championships

1500m

My pick: Faith Kipyegon

Faith Kipyegon had a late start to the season due to injury, and while she has only raced three times in 2024, my goodness have they been impressive ones.

After some dominant 1500m and 5000m running at the Kenyan national trials in Nairobi, Kipyegon returned to sea level and broke her own world record in the 1500m by running 3:49.04, putting to bed any idea that she was in anything less than the form of her life. The only woman to have ever broken 3:50 has now done it twice and will head to the French capital in hopes of becoming the first person to ever win three Olympic 1500m gold medals, and the first woman to win the same track event three times at the Olympic level.

Since successfully defending her title in Tokyo, Kipyegon has gone undefeated over the 1500m. She’s won 17 consecutive races, which included becoming the back-to-back world champion and twice breaking the world record, as well as setting half of the ten fastest times in history (more if you ignore the times that are the result of the state-funded doping program in China during the 90s). Good luck to anyone hoping to get past her in Paris.

The Challengers

Jessica Hull

Speaking of being in the best form of your life, July has been quite the month for Jessica Hull. The Australian followed Kipyegon for much of her 1500m world record a few weeks ago and was rewarded with a new personal best of 3:50.83. Not a week later, Hull broke the 2000m world record at the Monaco Diamond League, winning the race by more than six seconds and reaffirming that she is a serious medal contender for the Olympics.

Hull has finished seventh in this event at the last two World Championships and was all the way back in 11th at the 2021 Olympics, but she was also just the 51st fastest 1500m runner in history as recently as the start of this year. She’s since jumped to fifth on that list, and her chances of medalling in Paris have jumped with her. In 2024, Hull has set eight personal bests in everything from the 800m to the 3000m, breaking five national records in the process and putting herself in the conversation to become the first Australian woman to make the podium in this event.

Faith Kipyegon (R) and Jessica Hull (L) lead the 1500m at the Paris Diamond League

Gudaf Tsegay

Gudaf Tsegay slots between Hull and Kipyegon on the 2024 rankings with her 3:50.30 from the first Diamond League of the year back in April. In the last 12 months, Tsegay has broken the 5000m world record and set the third fastest 10,000m and 1500m times in history, proving that she has perhaps replaced Sifan Hassan as the most versatile distance runner on the planet. She was slated to emulate Hassan’s Olympic treble in Paris, but earlier this week decided to withdraw from the 10,000m, which is the night before the 1500m final. While this does mean that she will be on fresher legs than originally anticipated, I don’t think that will weigh on Kipyegon’s mind: the Kenyan is 14-0 against her Ethiopian counterpart. Nevertheless, the rest of the field will not be too happy with this development, as Tsegay is almost guaranteed to make the podium if she’s feeling good on the day. The Ethiopian has only competed in two 1500m races in 2024, both of which she won, but she also went unbeaten in the event in 2023 and was the world indoor champion at the distance in 2022.

Kipyegon, Hull, and Tsegay have almost three seconds on the next best performer of the year, so while the likes of Laura Muir, Elle St. Pierre, and Birke Haylom have the potential to challenge for the podium, they are never beating Kipyegon. Truthfully, nobody is getting past Kipyegon, but at least Hull and Tsegay have proven they can run somewhat close to her.

Gudaf Tsegay en route to setting the 1500m indoor world record

You can access all start lists for the 2024 Paris Olympics here.