Cycling, crystals and cutting-edge science: the secrets of Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell’s success
Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, who oversaw gold medal success in Torun for Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter Bell, believe the best is yet to come for the pairIt was the architect of the London 2012 Olympics who said it best, shortly after Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, Georgia Hunter Bell and Molly Caudery had lit up the world indoor championships with three gold medals in 29 minutes.“That was a towering moment, not just for UK Athletics but for British sport,” said Sebastian Coe, now the World Athletics president.“It was very exciting, hugely inspirational.I really do hope they cause a stampede to local athletics clubs, particularly among young girls.”Soon afterwards, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, the husband and wife coaching team who have guided Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell to glory, were explaining the secrets behind their success – ranging from cycling to crystals to cutting-edge science – before predicting the best was yet to come.
Painter says Hodgkinson was feeling so good that she felt she might break her world indoor 800m record again in the final on Sunday, despite having raced twice in two days.“Warming up she said: ‘I feel amazing.I won’t be surprised if I get a PB here,’” Painter says.“I went: ‘OK, your PB is a world record.’ Afterwards she had no lactic [acid].
And she was like: ‘I’m just going to do the 4x400m relay,’ and an hour later she ran 50,10sec,”No one in the field of specialist 400m runners ran quicker, which makes Painter believe that even greater peaks are around the corner, including Hodgkinson possibly taking down the 800m outdoor world record, set in 1983,What has changed? “It’s the first time since Budapest in 2023 where she’s turned up to a championship 100% healthy,” Painter says,“Even at the Paris Olympics she had a bit of a niggle and missed some of the winter.
But this year she’s not missed a session,So we’re seeing times she normally does in summer already,”Painter thinks it helps that Nike has given them a budget for a physiotherapist, Alison Rose, who has kept Hodgkinson’s hamstring problems under control and a physiologist, Rachel McCormick, who formerly worked at the Australian Institute of Sport,“Keely’s just in a very happy place at the moment, relationships‑wise,” Painter says,“She’s moving house, so that’s exciting, when you have all those things coming together.
”Hodgkinson believes Himalayan salt crystals have helped to calm her,“It’s about making the human happy,” Painter says,“If they’re in a happy place they’re going to perform well,”Meadows stresses how Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell push each other in training, with the former having more speed and the latter more speed endurance,Despite often going head-to-head they remain great friends.
“They’re a dynamic duo,” she says.“They elevate each other,” Painter adds.They are very different personalities, however.Shortly after she broke the world indoor 800m record in February, Hodgkinson had a night on the town with her friends to celebrate her birthday when she bumped into Coe and Collette Roche, a Manchester United chief executive.“We thought it was quite funny,” Meadows says.
“But we do keep reminding ourselves that Keely can’t be a robot.“Georgia’s like me.I was a robot and I’m very analytical.Georgia’s exactly the same.But Keely’s a free spirit.
You have to keep things flexible for her.”One big shift over the winter is that Hodgkinson has started cycling on her easy endurance days and she enjoys it so much that one‑hour sessions sometimes turn into 90 minutes.“We’ve had to rein her back,” Meadows says.“It’s just great, though.She finds it so boring on a static bike or the elliptical [machine] in the gym.
If she wants to carry on in this sport for a decade or more, we have to let her enjoy life,”It is that approach to coaching – art, science and the arm around the shoulder – that make Painter and Meadows among the best in the world,“Trevor does all the programming and he’s absolutely brilliant,” Meadows says,“There can be seven different training sessions going on within the same session because everyone’s so bespoke,Keely needs a little bit more of this, Georgia needs that, somebody else needs something else.
I don’t know how he does it.”Painter insists a key part of his philosophy is that he does not want athletes doing too much long slow running for the aerobic content of the training.“We have to have speed work, lactate work, threshold work and then long slow volume, so we do as much of the long slow stuff on bikes, in swimming pools, on cross trainers, or ellipticals,” he says.“It’s up to each individual.Some girls love swimming, some like cycling.
As long as they’re giving me, say, 45 minutes on a bike, it’s as good as 30-35 minutes on the running, but without the impact.Then when we run on the track and we’re doing sessions we feel sharper and the sessions are better.”Painter says that, even with her science background, McCormick has been surprised with how quickly Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell recover between sessions.“A lot of the science has been done on 5k, 10k and marathon runners.You look at Jakob Ingebrigtsen and it’s all double threshold work and keeping your blood lactate down sub‑four, things like that.
“She’s testing us and we’re up in the 20s.And then she’s like: ‘Oh they’re going to be screwed for like a week here.’ Then two days later we’re up in 20s again and she’s blown away by how we’ve worked like that and then come back and do it again.It’s down to a steady buildup of work over the years.”Painter believes McCormick’s work is just getting started.
“In the long term, she’s going to be of massive help in terms of how we get even better.”
Estate of Mike Lynch ordered to pay £920m to Hewlett-Packard
The estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for HP’s acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy, after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 on a trip with friends and family celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011
Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened
Britain’s economy could be dragged into recession by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes, economists at Morgan Stanley have warned.Following this morning’s data showing a slowdown in private sector growth this month and a surge in input costs (see 9.41am), Morgan Stanley economist Bruna Skarica has warned that the energy price shock is likely to prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates, which would hurt growth.Skarica points out that oil prices have risen by around 40% since January, with natural gas contracts up by around 80%, prompted the financial markets to predict the BoE will raise rates this year.Skarica told clients:double quotation markShould these financial conditions and commodity prices be sustained in the coming months, we would be calling for a pronounced UK recession at the turn of the year
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the Tesla Cybertruck.Nvidia hosted a conference last week where it emphasized AI agents – semi-autonomous chatbots that can perform digital tasks for you – as the next frontier in tech. The company announced a toolkit for agents, including NemoClaw, an AI agent software suite for businesses
Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025
The amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online rose by 14% last year, with the majority of videos showing the most extreme type of content, according to a safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation said it identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025. It added that there had been a more than 260-fold increase in videos.The IWF said 65% of the 3,443 videos were classified as category A, the term for the most severe material under UK law. The corresponding figure for non-AI videos was 43%, said the watchdog, showing that the technology was being used to create more violent content
World Snooker Championship to remain at Crucible until at least 2045 with revamp
Barry Hearn concedes he has let his heart rule his head for the first time in his career after striking a remarkable new long-term deal to keep snooker’s world championship at the Crucible Theatre – before hinting that his son Eddie was among those who were against the decision.The tournament has been played at the 980-seat venue in Sheffield since 1977, and it will remain there until at least 2045 with an option to extend to 2050 after World Snooker Tour and Sheffield city council agreed a contract to ensure snooker’s most prestigious event will stay at its spiritual home.As part of the agreement, the Crucible will undergo a renovation after the 2028 tournament, with the venue securing £45m of government investment that Hearn admitted was decisive in keeping snooker in Sheffield. An extra 500 seats will be installed at the theatre, taking capacity to 1500.It is a striking and notable agreement for the sport, not least because Hearn himself had made loud noises in recent years about the need for a completely rebuilt Crucible with at least 3,000 seats if the world championship was to remain in Sheffield amid interest from places such as Saudi Arabia and China
West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe
Sebastian Coe has warned that London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships could be scuppered by West Ham’s refusal to allow their stadium to be used in September.World Athletics has made it clear to bidding cities, which the Guardian understands also includes Rome, Munich and Nairobi as well as a mooted Indian city, that the world championships should be the grand finale to the athletics season.However West Ham are so far refusing to vacate their stadium for around three weeks in September, despite the London bid having the strong backing of the government and the mayor’s office.“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there,” said Lord Coe. “All I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle
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