by Stuart Weir
This story should make you smile. Like Quincy Wilson in the US, young athletes stand out at the Olympics. Stuart Weir wrote this piece on Phoebe Gill, the seventeen-year-old Wonderkid, who you will see in Paris from August 1-11, 2024!
Pheobe Gill – just 17 and off to Paris
When 17-year-old Pheobe Gill ran in Belfast in May, she hoped for a PR and that she might dip under 2m for the first time. She won in 1:57.86! Before you could dismiss it as a fluke, two weeks later, she ran 1:58.07. Two amazing times, the Paris standard was achieved, but she still had to come in the top two at GB trials. I fully expected her to be outsmarted by older, more experienced athletes. She had her own tactical plan for the GB Champs final. It was quite a simple plan – take the lead and run faster than everyone else! It worked as she won in 1:58.66. to secure a place in Paris
I asked her on a recent British Athletics press point how normal her life was at the moment. She replied that she had won the GB trials on a Sunday and that she was in a High School Math lesson on Monday morning, which “was definitely a grounding experience!”
She said of the Belfast race: “I knew that I could get a personal best in Belfast because I had just done a personal best in the 1500 – 4:05 -, so I knew I was in good form, but I was definitely not expecting to come away from that race with a 4 second PB, and I remember crying on the plane back because going sub two had been such a dream of mine for so long – like it is to all 800-metre athletes – and to think that I had done that in that race, was the most indescribable thing. I was just so happy”.
At just 17, she has another year of High School specializing in biology, chemistry, and mathematics. Then, she wants to go to university rather than become a professional athlete. At this stage, she is thinking of a UK university as a normal student—remember that there are no sports scholarships in the UK. Whether she might be tempted by an offer from an American School remains to be seen.
She came across as a very confident 17 year-old but equally a down-to-earth, girl next door type. Swimming was her first sport but when she was 8, her elementary school teacher saw her running round the school field and decided to enter her for a cross country race. She won. She then came 3rd and 1st in the national cross-country races. She told us that experience helped her to realize two things: that she had a talent for running and should join a running club and that she hated cross-country! She joined St Albans (just north of London) and was assigned to coach Deborah Steer, who has coached an elementary school pupil to the Paris Olympics. In talking about Deborah, Phoebe described her as “my lovely coach” adding “and I don’t plan on changing that for a while because we have such a great relationship and she’s really helped me find my love for 800 metres and 1500 metres”.
It must be a bit overwhelming to go from being a just outside 2 minutes 800m runner to the Olympics in just over two months, but she comes across as a very sensible and “grounded” (her word) 17 year old. Asked how she had spent the 2-3 weeks since her Olympic selection was confirmed, she replied: “Well, I’ve kind of been focusing on not getting too carried away with all of the attention leading up to the games because I don’t want it to psych myself out and I’ve just trying to keep the normality for as long as possible before I leave to Paris. I think I’ll be really good for my headspace and I just want to keep the same routine as I have been for this past season because it’s been working for me. I finished school last week and now I’m just relaxing in my summer, doing a few media things here and there and I’m not changing my training too much in any way, shape or form because I don’t think it’s the best idea for me to get too carried away with the fact that I’m going to the Olympics, I just want to keep everything as normal for as long as possible until I’m on the train to Paris. I’m just so happy and I’m so grateful for this year because it’s been the most fun I’ve ever had”.
She continued, talking about her hopes for Paris, “Well, I definitely wanna get out everything I can from these games – the Olympic Village, the atmosphere being around all these great legends in sports. And of course, it’s easy to say that I want to come into this games with no expectations, but I think every athlete always puts some goals in their heads that they’d like to do. For me, it’s just to progress through as many rounds as possible and to have fun and run with freedom throughout the entire time, because that’s when I start to excel, when I’m not too stressed out about the environment around me. I just can’t wait to be running and with these amazing crowds of people and hopefully it will produce some fast times, but we’ll see what happens”.
In Paris she will be joined by Keely Hodgkinson and Jemma Reekie. In Tokyo Britain had three of the eight finalists and it certainly could happen again. Phoebe met Keely at the trials – Keely ran 400 not 800 – and recalls “she spoke to me after the trials and I was trying not to be a fan because I’ve been looking up to her for so long and to see that she’s in such great form is making me really excited to run alongside her”. As she said, in 2021 Tokyo in 2021 she was staying up until 2:00 in the morning to watch the 800 and watching Keely get that silver was unforgettable and to think that I’m running on this stage is unbelievable to me”.
Only 17 but in the Olympics and with every chance of making the final and then…well anything could happen.
