There’s been a lot of talk this week about taking time off, recuperating and the best way to make a comeback. What works for some won’t necessarily work for others and sometimes it’s unfair to make any comparison. Particularly across different walks of life.
In the trailer for the new film Anemone, which circulated on Thursday, it appears Daniel Day-Lewis has made a terrific comeback after taking eight years off.
Directed by his son Ronan, the film marks his first appearance anywhere since Phantom Thread in 2017, after which Day-Lewis announced his retirement – or at least the need for an extended period of recuperation.
From the early evidence, the three-time Oscar winner is right back where he left off and not just playing it safe. And even if eight years is a long time to walk away from any profession, it’s a decision he felt had to be made.
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Professional athletes aren’t as blessed with such choices and walking away from even one season is never easily done. So the decision by Rhasidat Adeleke to call time on her athletics season on Monday was one she felt had to be made.
It’s been a strangely elongated summer on the track and field, the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo still three weeks away. This is the latest they’ve ever started except for Doha in 2019 when the brutal desert heat pushed things out to even later in September.
That’s made it more difficult to plan things exactly. Lots of athletes have been drifting in and out of top form since the first Diamond League meeting in Xiamen, China, back on April 26th. Some – like Adeleke – have been clearly off their best and for others it’s still hard to tell if they’ll be peaking in Japan.
Adeleke referred to her lingering injuries and continuous setbacks which made it increasingly difficult for her to train and perform at the level she expects from herself.
“This season has tested me in more ways than I ever anticipated,” she said. While sparing us the exact details on that front, Adeleke has never hit full stride this year and maybe there was nothing to suggest things were about to change in time for Tokyo.
Before last Saturday, there was nothing to suggest Keely Hodgkinson was going to get back to her best in time for Tokyo. She hadn’t raced anywhere since winning the Olympic 800m in Paris last August (Britain’s only gold medal in athletics), having gone unbeaten in 2024.
That race was the most-watched event on the BBC throughout the entire Paris Games, with 9.1 million people tuning in as Hodgkinson’s bold front-running move with a lap to go improved on the Olympic silver medal she won as a 19-year-old in Tokyo in 2021.
That performance also earned Hodgkinson the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2024, with her coaching team of husband and wife Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows jointly named BBC Sports Personality Coach of the Year.
Now 23, Hodgkinson was expected to carry British hopes into Tokyo. She’d cut short her 2024 season after Paris when tearing her left hamstring, before tearing it again last February, around the same time Athletics Weekly magazine had Hodgkinson as their cover shot under the caption “The Star Attraction”.
Then it emerged in May that Hodgkinson had torn her right hamstring, blaming that on a stiffness in her back caused by an eight-hour round-trip to Windsor Castle to collect her MBE from Prince William.
“It was four hours in a car one way and four hours back,” her coach Painter said. “If she does things like that, it does mess her back up a little bit. And unfortunately it was a couple of sessions after that when the problem occurred.”
A third hamstring tear in nine months would have finished the season of many athletes, but Hodgkinson never lost sight of Tokyo. Despite the extended period of recuperation, she came out last Saturday and in her first race in 376 days won the 800m at the Silesia Diamond League in Poland in 1:54.74, the fastest time in the world this year.
It was also the ninth-fastest time in history, and just short of her own British record of 1:54.61.
“There was a period of time where I didn’t know if I would be able to make it back for this season,” Hodgkinson said afterwards.
“So now that we have, I just want to enjoy everything. I don’t want to waste an opportunity, I’m just happy to be back.
“Some people may have thought I was a bit delusional to go that fast, but sometimes you need to be a bit delusional...”
Like Day-Lewis, Hodgkinson now appears right back where she left off, not playing it safe either. Days after Silesia she came out at the Lausanne Diamond League on Wednesday and won handily again, this time in the pouring rain. She’s now the clear favourite for Tokyo, having won silver at the last two World Championships.
Hodgkinson has also made clear she couldn’t have made this comeback without her support team.
The M11 Track Club run by Painter and Meadows, and which also includes Ireland’s Sarah Healy, now has a full-time physiotherapist funded by Nike, one of Hodgkinson’s sponsors.
“We’re just making sure Keely’s body’s in the right place before she does any sort of fast running because of the problems she’s had,” Painter said. “But it’s benefiting the whole group and not just Keely.”
Adeleke turns 23 next week, is six months younger than Hodgkinson and has ample time to get her career back on track. She has also played things safe in her decision not to go to Tokyo and she may also need to be more patient about her comeback.
