• World record-holder Keely Hodgkinson seeks her first world indoor medal
• Audrey Werro set to be her closest challenger
• Tsige Duguma and Isabelle Boffey among medal contenders

Keely Hodgkinson’s extensive collection of medals is lacking in one respect – nothing from a World Indoor Championships.

Untimely injuries have prevented her from taking part in the past three editions of the competition, with her closest call coming in 2022 when she arrived in Belgrade having set the fastest women’s indoor 800m for 20 years – 1:57.20 – only to damage a quad muscle during warm-up.

This time the 24-year-old Briton, who earned Tokyo Olympic silver and Paris Olympic gold and who has two world outdoor silver medals and a bronze, appears to be in perfect shape to give full expression to her talent in Poland – following a 2025 season to which she was only able to make a late entry in August.

In her first race of the season at the UK Indoor Championships, Hodgkinson lowered her British short track record from 1:57.18 to 1:56.33, moving up to third place on the world all-time list.

That was by way of a warm-up for her world record attempt at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Liévin five days later, when she broke the mark of 1:55.82 set by Slovenia’s Jolanda Čeplak on 3 March 2002 – the day Hodgkinson was born – with 1:54.87.

She said afterwards that she thought she could go faster.

“I’ve had my healthiest winter for years,” she said in Birmingham. “It was so frustrating being on the sidelines for such a long time. I’m just happy to be able to do an indoor season and have nothing holding me back.”

What that will mean in the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena Toruń remains to be seen – but it will be worth watching.

With Hodgkinson’s training partner Georgia Hunter Bell – who narrowly beat her to 800m silver at last year’s World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 – concentrating on the 1500m in Poland, her main challenger looks likely to be the 21-year-old Swiss athlete who has also benefitted from a full, hard winter of training – Audrey Werro.

Winner of the 2025 Diamond League title, Werro became the early world leader after improving her own Swiss short track record to 1:57.27 at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Belgrade, having run 1:57.49 10 days earlier.

In Liévin she contested the lead with Hodgkinson after the pacemakers had dropped away at the halfway point but lost touch with her by 600 metres, finishing second in 1:58.38, with Ethiopia’s Olympic silver medallist Tsige Duguma third in 1:58.83.

Duguma, who began her career as a 400m runner, will be seeking to replicate her performance at the 2024 edition of the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow when she announced her arrival as an 800m force by taking gold.

Hodgkinson’s compatriot Isabelle Boffey will also be in the medal mix after running a personal best of 1:57.43 in Boston, a performance that has established her as third fastest in this year’s world top list.

Other notable contenders include Kenya’s Gladys Chepngetich, who has run a best of 1:58.81 this year, last year’s silver medallist Nigist Getachew of Ethiopia, the US pair of Valery Tobias and Addison Wiley, and Jamaica’s Natoya Goule-Toppin, while European indoor champion Anna Wielgosz races for the host nation.

Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics

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