Keely Hodgkinson ran with the weight of Great Britain’s expectations on her shoulders but still emerged Olympic 800m champion at Stade de France.
The Wigan world silver medallist was the heavy favourite heading not just into Monday night’s final but well ahead of these Games, setting a world-leading time of 1:54.61 just over two weeks before what had increasingly started to feel like a dance with destiny.
On a clear Monday evening in Paris she was calm and collected, moving up from fifth to first entering the final lap and cruised across the line in 1:56.72.
Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma surged to silver in 1:57.15, while Kenya’s world champion Mary Moraa collected bronze.
Brits sprint to glory in velodrome
There was also glory for Britain in the velodrome on Monday night as Emma Finucane, Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell won gold in the women’s team sprint after breaking the world record in all three rounds on Monday.
Team GB clocked a time of 45.186 seconds to beat New Zealand by five tenths of a second, claiming Britain’s first ever medal in an event in which they failed to even qualify at the last two Olympics.
Britain were behind on the splits after the first lap but Capewell overturned that deficit before Finucane extended the lead on the final leg.
It sparked emotional celebrations in the velodrome with Marchant, 31, kissing her two-year-old son Arthur at the side of the track while the 25-year-old Capewell could be seen in floods of tears as they embraced.
The Olympic title is vindication for several years of hard work put in by the team to become competitive, after Marchant was left to fly the flag alone at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, winning individual bronze in Brazil.
Finucane, the 21-year-old individual world champion, is hoping this could be the first of three gold medals in Paris as she also targets the individual event and the keirin, with Marchant due to join her in the latter event.
Finucane said: “We have been working really hard on this. Process for us is really key and we nailed that final. I believed in us before we went out that we could do it but to actually execute lap one, lap two, lap three pretty much perfectly. To cross the line first I was just like ‘no way’. It’s a dream come true.”
Marchant described the gold win as “phenomenal, absolutely incredible” and Capewell added: “It didn’t feel real all day. We did every ride and it was like ‘oh faster, oh faster’ and we were top of the timesheets.”
The British trio topped the time sheets in qualifying, clocking 45.472 to narrowly beat the world record set by China at a national event in June.
Illustrating the fast conditions of the Paris track, Germany and New Zealand both set world records within minutes of each other in the first round, only for Britain to go faster again with a time of 45.338 to earn their place in the gold medal race.
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