Georgia Bell completes epic journey from parkruns to 1500m Olympic bronze

Three years ago, Georgia Bell watched the Tokyo Olympics like the rest of us: from the couch. She was 27, retired as a serious athlete, and the living embodiment of Marlon Brando’s character Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront . Coulda been a contender? Bell was always on the verge until injuries intervened.

But as she watched Team GB’s Alex Bell and Katie Snowden, athletes she had competed against as juniors, something began to stir. A few months later Bell went from that couch to a 5km parkrun in Bushy Park. Slowly she began to run more. Race more. And now, incredibly, she is an Olympic 1500m bronze medallist.

Related: Jessica Hull claims Olympic 1500m silver behind untouchable Faith Kipyegon

“When I got back into running the goal wasn’t to try to make the Olympics,” she said afterwards. “That would have been absolutely bonkers. It was just going back to something that I really loved.”

And now look. This was a medal achieved the hard way, as Bell clung on for dear life on a brutal first lap that was run in sub four-minute mile pace. But having attached herself like a limpet to a pack of eight leading athletes, she found herself moving through the field as the bell rang.

Coming around the final bend, it still looked as if the 30-year-old had too much to do. But somehow Bell found a second and a third wind to pip the Ethiopian Diribe Welteji to bronze. Her time? A staggering 3min 52.61sec – a new British record and a 10-second improvement to her personal best of 4:03 at the start of the year.

“When I saw them coming through, 59.6, I was like: ‘Oh,’” said Bell. “I knew it was going to be painful. I just thought: ‘I know I can finish strong.’ So I zoned out after that first lap and tried to sit in the train and not ­overthink it.”

Team GB will never admit it, but some medals are simply more inspirational than others. And watching an athlete who had quit running on the track between 2017 and 2022 be resuscitated by a love of parkrun was a real This Girl Can moment.

Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon took gold in 3:51:29, with Australia’s Jessica Hull earning silver in 3:52.56. The other British runner in the final, Laura Muir, ran a highly commendable race to ­finish fifth in 3:53.37.

To make it even sweeter for Bell, she was actually born in Paris. “On the start line, I was telling myself that I was born for this in the sense that I was born in Paris 30 years ago. I just felt like I have nothing to lose, I had no pressure on me. So I thought: ‘Just go for it, and see what happens.’”

Some will be shocked at this result. But Bell always had talent. As a teenager, she was among the best 800m runners in the country, with a personal best of 2min 3sec. However, after repeatedly getting injured while at the University of California, Berkeley, she decided to quit the sport.

“I had a lot of stress fractures,” she said. “I was in California for two years and I’d say probably about a year of that I was in a boot. I was just never track fit. Always had a good cross-country season or did cross-country and then was always injured both indoor and outdoor.”

But during lockdown, Bell started doing long cycle rides and occasional runs without problems. By November 2022 she was confident enough to get back in touch with her old coaches, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, who guided Keely Hodgkinson to the 800m Olympic gold medal this past week. Would they be interested in taking her back?

They were. And under their coaching, which involves supplementing 30 miles of running a week with 100 miles of cycling, she has soared.

Such was Bell’s improvement that in March she ran for Great Britain for the first time, finishing fourth at the world indoor championships in Glasgow. Even so, few expected her to win a medal in Paris. The bookies, who are not known for giving money away, gave her just a 20% chance beforehand.

Related: Paris Olympics day 15: GB take both 4x400m bronzes, taekwondo silver for Cunningham, bronze for Bell and more – live

But on a dazzling final night at the Stade de France, where Emmanuel Wanyonyi took 800m gold and Jakob Ingebrigtsen powered away to win the 5,000m, Bell confounded expectations again.

Yet it was a close-run thing, as she found herself in fourth with 100m to go. “I was thinking: ‘I can pull this out,’” she said. “I finished fourth at the world indoors and I know what it’s like. I just needed to find something extra. And I found it.”

What makes Bell’s accomplishment even more impressive is that until May she combined training twice a day with her full-time job in cybersecurity before taking a sabbatical to prepare for Paris. Now, though, she had a dilemma.

“Work were like: ‘If you go to the Olympics and get a medal, we still want you back,’” she confessed. “And when they said that on 1 May, when the laptop got slammed shut, I thought: ‘There’s no way I’ll win a medal.’

With a smile, she added: “I’ll probably have a chat with them now things have changed slightly.” If Bell negotiates as hard as she runs, it will be an interesting conversation.