I have big goals – Georgia Hunter Bell out to prove she is no one-season wonder

Olympic 1500 metres bronze medallist Georgia Hunter Bell is ready to leave her ‘parkrun-to-podium’ narrative in the dust.

The 31-year-old took a five-year hiatus from sport, famously finding her way back into the fold of coaching pair Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter, who also oversee Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson, after initially rediscovering running as a way to get out of the house during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hunter Bell only left her job in software sales to become a full-time athlete in May, claiming bronze at the Paris Games just a few months later, and is now eyeing up her first major international title at this week’s European Indoor Championships.

“Everyone else has their expectations and that’s great, but I’m more, I don’t want to just have one great year and fall off,” Hunter Bell told the PA news agency.

“I want to back it up the way that Keely did. I think that’s the mark of true runners, successful runners and athletes, they can consistently come back and win medals.

“This year I just have big goals of things I want to achieve.”

Hunter Bell is this week releasing a film about her unconventional journey, one that saw her start out as a promising junior athlete and English schools champion before curtailing her career after an injury-plagued spell as an NCAA athlete at the University of California, Berkeley.

But after posting some promising times during the pandemic, she contacted former coach Painter.

“Obviously there’s 20 years of work that has gone into it. I want people, mainly girls and women, to see that there are different paths to achieve what you want to achieve and not put so much pressure on them.

“People who are in the working world who had dreams, and they put their passions on hold for life, and they think they will never get back there, or if it hasn’t happened now, it never will.

“I feel like, especially with women, they’re told that when you turn 30, if you haven’t got everything figured out – if you haven’t got a mortgage and a dog and you’re having babies and you’ve made it in your career – you’re never going to make it.

The reigning European outdoors silver medallist exceeded expectations in Paris, where she also set a new British women’s 1500m record of three minutes 52.61 seconds, and is now perhaps Great Britain’s best hope of gold this week in Apeldoorn.

Becoming a full-time athlete – Hunter Bell describes shutting her work laptop for the final time as “liberating, like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders” – has allowed her to incorporate more strength and conditioning into training, and simply get more rest.

“I think I only realised how unsustainable it was when I stopped,” she added.

It is possible training partners Hunter Bell and Hodgkinson may even come up against each other in the 800m sometime soon, with Hunter Bell and her coaching team “at this point not ruling out” the idea should she seek to qualify for both events at September’s World Championships.

“(Keely) is capable of running the world record, definitely,” said Hunter Bell. “And I would hope to just be right behind her in the race, so I get pulled through to her time.

“I think she will always beat me in the 800, (but) hopefully I might be able to get a little bit closer.”