From parkrun to podium: Georgia Bell’s inspiring Olympic journey

Few British athletes at these Olympic Games have a more staggering or inspiring story than Georgia Bell. In 2017 she quit a promising track career because her body was broken. But in 2022 she started running again with a parkrun on a cold March day in Bushy Park, south-west London. And now, at the age of 30, she is an Olympic 1500m medallist .

To top it all, Bell did it while working full-time in cybersecurity. However the husband and wife coaching team behind her brilliant bronze in a British record of 3min 52.61sec believe this is just the start – and that Bell can emulate Kelly Holmes by winning gold in Los Angeles.

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“She is 30 but Kelly Holmes was 34 when she did the double gold,” says Trevor Painter. “And she is very lightly raced, she has had a lot of years out of the sport so her body is not hanging on like some people her age.”

Painter’s wife, Jenny Meadows, even thinks she can get close to Faith Kipyegon’s world record , saying: “3:49.0 is a little bit in front of her 3:52, but never say never for anything.”

Painter and Meadows were also the team behind Keely Hodgkinson’s 800m gold medal . But it was even harder for them to prepare Bell as she lives in Clapham and not Manchester, where they are based.

A key session came in holding camp when Bell rattled out a 1200m time trial that started with a 61sec first lap, followed by a second lap of 64sec, and an ultra-fast third lap – which closely emulated what she had to run in the 1500m final.

But Meadows also points to Bell’s incredible work ethic and ability to follow instructions. “We will tell her to run at 4min pace and she will write the paces,” she says. “At Prefontaine, she ran 4min. Then in Rome [at the European championships], she got the medal. Then we went to Paris and said: ‘Let’s try and run 3:57,’ and she ran 3:56 and she said: ‘I’ve got a 3:53 in me.’ She just responds to the stimulus that we give her.”

Bell always had talent and ran an 800m in 2min 08sec at the age of 14. But nearly a decade ago they feared she might be the one that got away when she went to study in the US for a master’s.

“I was gutted when she went to America,” says Painter. “You could just see something special. We were coaching a girl called Leah Barrow at Birmingham University and she was at the same uni, and Georgia asked to join in.

“The first time she came, I thought she was like a society girl, like Tamara Beckwith; a glamorous girl,” says Painter. “But when I saw her run, I thought: ‘Oh.’ She very quickly rose through the development but the next thing she said she was off to do a master’s in the States.”

In the US it all went wrong as Bell’s body struggled to cope with running 60-mile weeks, when she was used to half that. “She tells a story of what she thought was her last ever race,” Painter says. “She ran 4:37 and she was on the start line thinking she will never run again. Too much volume, injuries, she fell out of love with it.”

Meadows says: “It broke her. But in November 2022 she phoned Trevor and said: ‘I’ve been doing some sessions, I’ve been trying to remember what I did years ago and I’ve run 4:16.’ We were like: ‘That’s pretty good.’”

Bell was also inspired by a run with her boyfriend, who is a strong cyclist. “During Covid he said: ‘Shall we go for a run?’ And she replied: ‘You don’t want to run with me – I used to be all right.’ They went for a run and she destroyed him. After that, she started to do some programmes.”

A more recent change came when Bell took a sabbatical from work from May to September to help her train full-time for Paris. “The day after world indoors [championships], she got an early flight back down to London and was at her desk for 12pm,” Painter says. “But since May she has just focused on being an athlete and it makes a huge difference.”

In fact, being at these Olympics has cost her money – not that Bell minds now. “Do you remember the cyber hit last month?” says Painter. “She was gutted because she said: ‘I’m losing so much commission because I’m not at work.’ She was getting phone calls and had to deflect them to work colleagues!”