Georgia Hunter Bell was such a huge favourite for 1500m gold that a £50 bet on her to win at the European Indoor Championships would have returned just one pound of profit. She was Britain’s banker. A cast-iron certainty. And then, with 100m to go, it all went horribly wobbly.
At that point, the Olympic 1500m bronze medallist was leading and looked to have everything under control. But just when everyone expected her to switch on the afterburners, her legs turned into spaghetti – the result, it later transpired, of an ear infection.
First Agathe Guillemot of France muscled past her to win in 4min 07.23sec. Then the Portuguese athlete Salomé Afonso did the same. And then came a final indignity as her British teammate Revée Walcott-Nolan snatched bronze in a photo-finish after both athletes had run 4:08.45.
“In the last stage, my legs just completely locked,” said Hunter Bell. “I don’t know when that last happened.
“I had an illness, I had an ear infection, I can’t really hear out my ear. Training has been a bit up and down. I thought I would still be fine for today. But I just didn’t have it. I’m obviously really gutted.”
The result was particularly shocking given that when Hunter Bell had won bronze in Paris in 3:52, Guillemot had finished seven seconds back in ninth – while Afonso and Walcott-Nolan did not even make the final.
However, the 31-year-old has promised to use her shock defeat as inspiration for the rest of 2025 – starting with the World Indoor Championships in China in two weeks – after the first major setback of her career since she returned to the sport after coming out of retirement three years ago. “I will have to go away and reset,” she said. “Last year when I came fourth at the world indoors that really fuelled me for the summer. So when I am done being sad about this, maybe I can take some positives out of it. But I am going to let myself be sad for tonight.”
Walcott-Nolan was rightly delighted in her first major medal. “My legs were absolutely going away from me,” she said. “But in my head, I thought: ‘OK, Georgia is a lot stronger than I am, and is a lot quicker than I am. If I just hold it tight to her as I can, and do as good as I can, then I’ll be happy with that.’ And that kind of got me the medal.”
There are more potential British medals over the weekend, with George Mills – the son of the former England footballer Danny – particularly bullish about his chances in the 3,000m.
The 25-year-old has spent the winter pushing his body through 120-mile training weeks at his sparse altitude camp in Dullstroom, South Africa. Such is his devotion, he could probably teach Benedictine monks a thing or two about abstinence.
Asked whether he had any guilty pleasures during the week, he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a simple guy. I love to train, hang out with my friends and teammates if I’m able to. That’s a good life.”
Naturally, he is also in bed by 10pm. “Sleep is when you recover,” Mills said. “You need to try and optimise that. I try to nap most afternoons and obviously get a good night’s sleep. I have blue-light glasses, earplugs, eye masks – all those sorts of things.”
The monastic regime does not end there. When he spoke to the British media he was eating boiled chicken and plain rice without any seasoning for lunch. “Flavour doesn’t make you fast,” he said.
For Mills to win gold, he will have to beat the double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who looked hugely impressive in winning 1500m gold in Apeldoorn on Friday. However, Mills is not completely ruling it out.
“Obviously he’s a phenomenal athlete,” said Mills. “But everyone’s got a target on their backs and in this sport no one is invincible.”
Mills was second to Ingebrigtsen at the European Championships last June. But that has only made him hungrier. “I got a taste of a medal in Rome last year,” he said. “Now I want to be competing for medals at every major championships.”
Meanwhile, there was more disappointment for another fancied British athlete as Amber Anning, the favourite for the women’s 400m, was disqualified after winning her heat. The 24-year-old, who came fifth in the Olympics, looked to have progressed comfortably in 51.01. However she left in tears after TV footage showed she stepped on the line multiple times.
