Keely Hodgkinson is chasing greatness. Already at 24 she has run her way into the middle-distance pantheon: Olympic gold. Tick. World Indoor gold. Tick. The 800m short track world record. Tick. European gold. She’s got four of them.But champions tend to have a brazen level of ambition. The Briton, who sits sixth on the women’s 800m all-time list, is laser-focused on taking down the longest-standing world record of the Olympic track disciplines: Jarmila Kratochvílova’s 1:53.28s two-lap run from 1983.“We’ve obviously got a plan A of what we’d like to happen,” she says over video call to various UK media, including The Athletic.“If I come into shape and want to go at it sooner, or it happens to be a bit later in the season, that could just be how it goes,” she adds. “I’m very happy with where I’m at, building on the indoor season. I’ve been healthy for a year now. I’ve not missed a training session.”Plan A has worked thus far. She suffered injuries early in the calendar year in the past two seasons. That caused disruption, including a hamstring problem that forced postponement of her planned 800m indoor world record attempt last February.One year on and fully fit, she cracked it, having opened up with a 1:56.33s run for the British indoor title — the fifth-fastest time ever indoors — before heading to Lievin, northern France, five days later. There she smashed a record as old as her. Hodgkinson was born on March 3 2002, the same day that Jolanda Ceplak ran 1:55.82s in Austria, finishing three-hundredths ahead of home favourite Stephanie Graf.Hodgkinson flew out over the opening 200m in Lievin, gapping a field that featured bona-fide athletes in Tsige Duguma and Audrey Werro en route to clocking 1:54.87s — a run that was almost a full second quicker than Ceplak.Hodgkinson celebrates winning the 800m indoor title in Poland earlier this year (Michael Steele/Getty Images)“I’m very grateful to be able to do the things that I’ve been wanting to do for the last two years in training,” she says. Winning a world title was another “thing”. She took bronze at last September’s World Championships in Tokyo — placing behind training partner Georgia Hunter-Bell — in what was only her fifth race of an injury-hit season. She’d made her third podium in as many World Championship appearances but wanted the crown to complete the set.That came this March at World Indoors in Torun, Poland. She blitzed the field again. “There’s other people in the race, I want to respect them and also make sure that I win too,” she says amid all the world record talk. But Hodgkinson made the race into a time trial in Torun, splitting 56.96s at halfway and striding clear of Werro once more. She won in a championship record time (1:55.31s).It proved worth the wait. That night Hunter-Bell won the 1,500m final and fellow Brit Molly Caudery jumped 4.85m to prevail in the pole vault. Great Britain had a Super Sunday with three gold medals in less than half an hour.