Athletics: Hodgkinson runs into form

By Murray McKinnon

Middle-distance runner Toni Hodgkinson is on target to again make the final of a major international competition following some encouraging training sessions in Portugal this week ahead of the world athletic championships in Seville, Spain.

Hodgkinson was eighth in the 800m at the Atlanta Olympic Games, sixth in the final of the 800m at the last world championships in Athens two years ago and eighth in the 1500m at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games.

"Training has been really good and the lead up races have gone well," said Hodgkinson.

The 27-year-old's opening race in Germany was 2m 2.29s, a time she described as a good opener in leading from start to finish.

"Each of the five races I have done have been different. In the Belgium champs I won by eight seconds with 2m 01.27s, having run 2m 5s in the heats," said Hodgkinson.

A top performance of 2m 00.15s came up late last month in Austria and she has had two further runs of 2m 01.25s in Stockholm and 2m 03.07s at Crystal Palace in London.

"The last two were tactical races and I had a stumble and a fall, but I was feeling I was running faster."

After the Kuala Lumpur Games Hodgkinson sustained an Achilles tendon injury which curtailed her racing through much of the last domestic season.

She returned to the track at the New Zealand championships in Hamilton in March where she won her fourth 800m title.

There have been no recurring problems with the injury since.

Hodgkinson last broke two minutes for the 800m in Stuttgart in 1997, just before the Athens world championships.

"I will need to be running much faster than my races to date to make the final.

"Only two automatically qualify from each heat for the semifinals and the races could be super fast or slow and tactical," said Hodgkinson.

Olympic 800m and 1500m champion Svetlana Masterkova of Russia heads the current world rankings with 1m 55.87s.