The golden one

It’s not easy being gold. Nor is it really fair. But we do it every time the Olympic Games comes around: we choose someone, sometimes more than one, usually live medal hopes in track and field, and make them the heart and soul of the Games: and call them golden girl and golden boy. Thus we turn hope into expectation and a small honour into a crippling burden. Alas poor Molly Caudery: she is British and the best pole-vaulter in the world this year. But yesterday she didn’t get a single clearance and wept a bucketful. But in the Parisian twilight Keely Hodgkinson of Wigan won a gold medal in the 800 metres as if self-doubt had never been a factor in her life.

Before yesterday Hodgkinson had always been silver: silver in the Tokyo Olympic Games of 2020, silver in the world championships in Eugene, Oregon in 2022, silver in the world championships in Budapest last year. But with sport’s inscrutable alchemy, last night she turned silver into gold.

The home nation normally picks a Golden One: the poster-boy or poster girl of the Games. In Sydney in 2000 they even made Cathy Freeman take part in the Olympic ceremony and light the torch. When she won the 400 metres it was as if Uluru had been lifted from her shoulders. In Athens the job went to Kostas Kenteris: he missed a drugs test the day before the Games began and didn’t even take part.

In London in 2012 the home nation went for Jess Ennis. In the two long days of the heptathlon she held herself in a bubble of self-isolated serenity until she won and was free to weep and rejoice. In Paris this time around Antoine Dupont played that difficult role at the start and France went on to win the rugby sevens under his leadership; but Léon Marchand then won four golds and you could hear the cheering at the English end of the Channel Tunnel. But last night belonged to Hodgkinson: allez Wigan!