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Reigning age-group duathlon world champion just won an Olympic bronze medal on the track

Great Britain's Georgia Bell's incredible comeback started with duathlon

Photo by: Georgia Bell Instagram

It’s safe to say that we’ve never seen a reigning age-group duathlon world champion run in the final of the 1,500 m race at Olympic Games. And we’re pretty sure that Georgia Bell won’t be heading to Townsville later this month to try and defend her title in the 30 to 34 age category. She has a good excuse though – Bell has been busy with a return to the highest levels of track and field racing, having just set a new British record for the 1,500 m and taking the silver medal at the Paris Games.

After a promising junior career as a track and field athlete – she won the u15 English Schools 800 m race in 2008 – Bell raced for the University of Birmingham before heading to the University of California, Berkeley. The training in California, though, with its emphasis on high mileage, proved to be too much for Bell, who suffered a number of injuries and quit the sport on her return to Great Britain in 2017.

“When I quit after college it was just so clear I hadn’t reached my full potential and it wasn’t a happy ending,” Bell told BBC Sport. “There was something left but I thought it would always be that way.”

Bell got a job working in cyber security, and would eventually get back into running, and also added biking to the mix. She combined duathlon with her comeback to track and field, winning the 30 to 34 age group at the World Duathlon Championships in Ibiza last May, then hitting the track and setting a bunch of personal bests over every distance from 1,500 m to 5,000 m. In February Bell won the British Indoor 1,500 m title, and took fourth at the world indoors over that distance, too.

The results were enough to get Nike interested in her – in March she announced that she’d become part of the company’s elite team.

She took silver at the European Championships and won the British Championships this summer, which was enough to put her on the British Olympic team.

Bell took a sabbatical from her job this summer to focus on the Games.

It proved to be a good move. Bell bronze-medal finish (3:52:61) in what was arguably one of the greatest 1,500 m races in history, set a new British record.

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Even before she got to Paris, she wasn’t sure if she would be returning to life as a working age-group duathlete/ track star:

“The plan is to go back [to work] but I’m having the best time of my life at the moment,” she told BBC. “Obviously I don’t know what is going to happen this summer. I am really enjoying it, and I think we will just have to stay tuned.”

Here’s hoping Bell won’t be giving up on her duathlon career, but based on today’s performance, we’re not likely to see her competing in any multisport races any time soon.