Georgia Bell’s rollercoaster journey to the World Indoors in Glasgow

British middle-distance runner has experienced many ups and downs and twists and turns since winning an English Schools 800m title back in 2008

It is 15 years since Georgia Bell proudly stood on top of the podium on a cool and drizzly weekend at the English Schools Championships in Gateshead. Since then she has fallen in and out of love with athletics, endured an injury-stricken spell at university in the United States, started a high-flying job in cyber security and dabbled with duathlon. Yet now, on the eve of the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, she is a bona fide 1500m medal contender with ambitions of making the Paris Olympics.

Unbeaten on the track in 2024 with PBs of 4:03 for 1500m and 8:42 for 3000m, the 30-year-old is thriving with coach Trevor Painter after teaming up with him again after a long break. One of the most exciting athletes to emerge during the indoor season so far, she could really earn a name for herself if she makes the podium this weekend.

“I’ve got really good momentum with racing at the moment” she says, “and I’m grateful to have a second shot with running. I’m seizing every opportunity.”

Back at Gateshead in 2008, Bell won the junior girls’ 800m title in 2:09.28 aged 14. Winners in the same age group that year included sprinter Jodie Williams, javelin thrower Freya Jones and long jumper Jazmin Sawyers, whereas gold medallists in older age categories that weekend included Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the high jump and Charlotte Purdue in the 3000m. The event was even broadcast live on Sky Sports despite clashing with the Olympic trials in Birmingham.

Some of the older athletes at those English Schools Championships could feasibly envisage making the GB team for London 2012. Bell’s performances, however, began to tail off a little and, despite featuring in AW in 2015, she largely went off the radar.

“I was a top under-15 and under-17 runner for 800m at the time,” she remembers, “so the foundations were always there. But I went to the US for university and never ran faster than I did when I was in the UK.”

Bell, who is from West London, studied in Birmingham and then the prestigious Berkeley in California. “I was there for two years and about half the time I was in a boot injured,” she says. “There was a high mileage mentality which didn’t really work for me.”

She adds: “Once I finished my collegiate career in the US I just stopped running completely and never thought I would ever get back on a track ever again.”

When the pandemic unfolded in 2020 and the nation went into lockdown, Bell enjoyed something of a physical reset. She began cycling a lot and found it complemented her running really well. She also credits “good old parkrun” as playing an important part in her comeback, followed by British Milers’ Club events.

Such was the low-key nature of her comeback, she didn’t even bother entering the 2023 British Championships. Instead she took part in duathlon events and won the age-group women’s title at the World Duathlon Championships in Ibiza last year.

“After a few races I got back in contact with my old coach Trevor (Painter). He always said to Jenny (Meadows, his wife and fellow coach) that I was ‘the one that got away’. So he was quite pleased when I got back in touch with him. That was about a year ago now and have just seen a really big impact very quickly. It began just as for fun to see how fast I could go but now it’s really escalated.”

Indeed, her 1500m best has tumbled from 4:16.21 in 2022 to 4:06.20 in 2023 to 4:03.22 this season indoors, whereas she has also shown great strength with an 8:42.16 win at 3000m in France in January.

She does all this while holding down a full-time job in cyber security as well which she describes as a “booming business” that would be “difficult to walk away from”.

Working from home gives her flexibility with her training, though. She still cycling around 100 miles per week on top of her running, with much of her riding done indoors with Zwift although she’s also done cycling trips abroad, ticking off classic Tour de France climbs like Mont Ventoux, for example.

“If duathlon was an Olympic sport, it might be an option for me,” she says. So isn’t triathlon an idea? “I swam as a child and was an ‘Ealing marlin’,” she says. “But I really dislike swimming and so does my hairdresser. It was one sport too far for me. I enjoy track running more than dragging myself to a leisure centre in the winter.”

In London she does sessions at Battersea but often travels to the north-west of England to train with Painter’s group. She has also gone to South Africa with the squad.

Keely Hodgkinson is of course Painter’s star athlete. Given this, Bell has been able to rub shoulders with Hodgkinson, plus other world-class athletes in the group like Irish 1500m runner Sarah Healy.

“It’s incredibly inspiring to see what Keely has achieved and it is really motivating as well to know if you can be in the mix and training sessions. It gives you a lot of confidence going into races,” she says. “Obviously just to be under the same guidance with Trevor and Jenny is huge.

“Their training obviously works, but it’s also just a really fun culture. Trevor just a bit of a joker and I think the go of them together makes it quite feel like a family feel like we have Trevor as the main coach, but then Jenny has been through all before. She’s incredibly involved. She gives really great advice about racing. And I think the mixture of that success with that kind of family feel is what is creating so many good results in that group.”

Bell is joined in the 1500m this weekend by fellow Brit Revee Walcott-Nolan as they face, among others, Ethiopians Freweyni Hailu and Diribe Welteji plus Australian Jess Hull and her training partner Healy.

“Since January, I’ve done six races and won all of them. So not saying I’m going win the world championships because that would be a big one. I’m still going into races just kind of respecting everyone, but not being afraid at all. And just putting myself in the best book, possible positions to race. So I think a medal is something that I would be aiming for.”

After Glasgow, she is setting her sights on making the team for Paris. “If you’d asked me four months ago, I would never said ‘yes’ about Paris,” she says. “But now I feel like the goal posts are really changing. We weren’t expecting to see the amount of improvement that we have in such a short time. I’m definitely going to be aiming for the Olympics this summer.”

READ MORE: Revee Walcott-Nolan thriving at OAC Europe

But over which distance? “We’re still trying to work it out,” she says. “I’m close to the qualifying mark over 1500m but I’m not ruling out the 5000m or 800m either.”

At the shorter distance she is looking forward to racing it again for the first time in seven years. It is also, of course, the event where she first made her mark at the English Schools all those years ago.

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