Chiswick Athlete Makes Bid To Be World Champion
Georgia Bell competing in world indoor 1,500 metres final
Georgia after winning through in the heats on Friday. Picture: YouTube
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March 3, 2024
An athlete from Chiswick will be making a bid to be world champion this Sunday (3 March) when she runs in the final of the 1500metre event at the world indoor championships in Glasgow.
30-year-old, Georgia Bell, a former St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School pupil, qualified in her heat this Friday in a time of 4 minutes 4.39 seconds, close to her personal best. She said afterwards she felt really comfortable during the race which was completed 10 seconds faster than the other heat in which her main rivals were competing.
In her first school report, when she was four, her Nursery Teacher wrote ‘ Georgia is very good at running’ and she started taking part in organised running events when she was just ten. The father of her good friend was already involved with Ealing, Southall, Middlesex Athletics Association based at Perivale Track so took them to training on a weekly basis when they reached Year 6.
Success came quickly and regularly with local leagues, London Mini Youth Games, London Mini Marathon, Middlesex English Schools, international junior selection and ranking as the fastest U15 & U17 800m female. After success at BUCS and England U23 she moved to Berkeley in California which she said was a dream come true.
She moved away from athletics after finishing college in America and a series of injuries but returned to running and cycling during lockdown and started taking part in Parkruns as well as cycling 100 miles a week.
After the race on Friday she said, “I’ve just had lots of nice messages about people saying like you’ve inspired me to get back into parkrun or go for a run and I think those are the messages that I get that I really like.”
A particularly fast time at the Bushy Park event in 2022 prompted her to think it might be possible to return to elite athletics and she contacted her old friend her old coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, who had coached Keely Hodgkinson to an Olympic silver medal. They helped her reduce her personal best by over ten seconds in a year and she became the fourth fastest in the world this year despite still working full-time at a cyber security firm. She hadn’t abandoned cycling either winning a gold medal in her World Duathlon age group in 2023.
She won the British Athletics Indoor Championships 1500m in Birmingham in February which earned her a place on Team GB for Glasgow.
Having not even bothered to enter the UK Athletics Championships last year she now is considering her chances of being selected for the Paris Olympics this summer and needs to improve by just a second to make the qualifying time.
She may be a long shot for gold this Sunday evening, but her qualifying time is the fourth fastest in the heats which suggests a podium finish may not be out of the question particularly with her record of defying norms and expectations and she says a medal is her aim.
The favourite will be the world mile record-holder Diribe Welteji and there are also two other Ethiopians who have run under 4 minutes in the event this year.
The race will be shown on BBC 2 at 9.30pm.
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