Atherton’s Keely Hodgkinson admits she was aiming to break the world record after doing just that in the 600m at SportCity last weekend.

The 20-year-old Olympic silver medallist from Tokyo 2020 clocked 1min 23.41secs at the Bryggen Sports event in Manchester, beating the recognised number one indoor mark in history of 1:23.44 set by Olga Kotlyarova, of Russia, in Moscow in 2004.

Hodgkinson went through 400m in 54.59 before finishing strongly in the last lap at the venue where she trains regularly.

“It feels pretty good,” Hodgkinson told athleticsweekly.com.

“I didn’t publicise it but I was going for the world record.

“My family is here, I train here all the time but I don’t like running on my home track because I associate it with training and it just feels weird but today it was fun.

“I came here to execute. I’ve been training so hard.

“This winter has been tough so I’m just happy to come out and start the season with a bang.”

The race was Hodgkinson’s first of the year after a spell of warm-weather training in South Africa with coaches Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter.

She will hope to use last weekend’s performance to launch into another big year indoor and outdoor.

In 2022, she won 800m silver at the World Championships before winning gold at the Europeans.

Hodgkinson has a few races lined up in Europe before a possible defence of her European indoor title in Istanbul early next month.

If she does race in Istanbul, she will turn 21 during the championships and, judging by her 600m in Manchester, her lifetime bests of 1:57.20 (indoors) and 1:55.88 (outdoors) look like being broken.

She added: “In a 600m it’s a case of ‘too fast and you’ll die’ but ‘too slow and you can’t make up the ground’, so myself and my coach (Painter) planned to run 54 through 400m and then try to hang on.”