by Stuart Weir
This is Stuart Weir’s piece on Georgia Bell and her amazing resurrection in the sport of athletics.
The GB women’s middle distance team for the Paris Olympics includes Phoebe Gill, aged 17, and Georgia Bell, aged 30, both in their first Olympics. Both are remarkable stories. Phoebe had to decline selection for the European Championships as she could not get time off High School—thank goodness the Olympics are in the school holidays.
The story of Georgia Bell is arguably more remarkable. A talented teenager – the highest-ranked 800m runner for Under 15 and Under 17 in the UK – she got a scholarship to the University of California in Berkeley. Looking back, she has two main memories – being injured a lot and being unable to improve her PR. With hindsight, she thinks “the high mileage philosophy out there didn’t work too well for me,” adding, “Once I finished my collegiate career out there, I just stopped running completely. Never thought I would ever get back on a track ever again”. She graduated in Politics.
From 2018 to 2021, according to her World Athletics page, she ran 7 times, running 4:48 for 1500. In 2022, she ran six times over varied distances from 1500 to 5K. Running UK Park Runs – a Saturday morning 5K fun-run for runners of all standards, began to raise questions in her head. She contacted her old coach, Trevor Painter (whose group includes Keely Hodgkinson). The progress she has made is remarkable. She described her first year back with Trevor as “I’ve just seen a really big impact very quickly”.
Early this year she ran in the GB Indoor champs – she won it in 4:09.66. She was selected for the World Indoors and came fourth (4:03.47). She also won races in Germany and Sweden in 4:03.
Come the outdoor season she won the GB Champs – outsprinting Laura Muir at the end of a slow, tactical race and accepted an invitation to run in the European Championships 1500 finishing second in 4:05.33. She set a PR at Pre (4:00.41) but it only lasted until she ran 3:56.54 in Paris. Now she is on her way to Paris again.
Asked just before the GB trials if making the GB Olympic team was realistic, she gave a refreshingly honest answer: “If you asked me four months ago I’d never have said ‘yes’. Now I feel like the goalposts are really changing. We weren’t expecting to see the amount of improvement that we have had in such a short time. So I am definitely going to be aiming to go to the Olympics this summer for sure”. And she is.
She mention in a press-point earlier this summer that she would concentrate on 1500 but wanted to run some 800s – a distance which she had not run for seven years – and hopefully improve her PR of 2:03. How does 1:56.28 in the London Diamond League sound?
While Georgia is based in London and Trevor in Manchester, she spends time with the group when she can including trips to South Africa etc. She says of Keely: “It’s so inspiring just to be at training and seeing her when we are jumping into sessions together – or seeing her going around the track. It’s incredibly inspiring to see what she has achieved and really motivating as well to know if you can be in the mix in training sessions it gives you a lot of confidence going into races. Just to be under the same guidance with Trevor and Jenny [Meadows] is huge”.
An athlete who could have been lost to the sport is now back with a vengeance and with a PR of 3.56, the Olympic final is the least she should achieve.
To read about Pheobe Gill,https://www.runblogrun.com/2024/07/pheobe-gill-just-17-and-off-to-paris.html
