Keely Hodgkinson has playfully poked fun at West Ham after it emerged that they could ruin London’s chances of winning the right to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships.
Sebastian Coe, the World Athletics president, has made it clear that he wants those world championships to be held in September as a finale to the athletics season. However West Ham do not want to give up the London Stadium for around three weeks for the event as the football season will have already started.
Hodgkinson, who won a brilliant World Indoor Championship 800m gold medal on Sunday night, made her feeling’s clear on the issue on Tuesday when she responded to a story on X saying that “London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships is in jeopardy”.
“The GB team will bring back more medals to that stadium than West Ham have seen in their entire history,” she wrote, before adding hand-over-the-mouth, laughing and heart emojis.
The 24-year-old received multiple supportive comments below her post from athletics fans, with one describing it as “the tweet equivalent of a two-footed challenge” and another writing: “Just when you thought you couldn’t love Keely any more she comes up with this banger of a tweet.” Some West Ham fans, on the other hand, suggested the tweet had been disrespectful.
West Ham secured tenancy of the taxpayer-funded stadium in 2013, a year it hosted after the London 2012 Olympics in what many regard as one of the bargains of the century. The club point out that it has a “contractual right ensuring West Ham United games take priority during the football season”.
Asked about that West Ham’s stadium deal, World Athletics president Lord Coe replied: “I’ve sat on the board of one Premier League club [as a trustee of the Chelsea Foundation], and I’m very close to another one [Manchester United], and I think they would have been pretty satisfied with that deal.”
Rome, Munich, Nairobi as well as an Indian city are also interested in hosting the 2029 world championships. Final submissions from bidding cities are required by early August, with a decision then made in September.
West Ham have won five major trophies over their history, including three FA Cups, the Cup Winners’ Cup and the Conference League in 2023. Meanwhile Hodgkinson has six gold medals at senior level in Olympic, world and European championships.
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