Georgia had been a runner in the past, and a very talented one. As a junior and U23 track athlete she won the BUCS (British Universities & Colleges Sport) indoor 800 metres title and won a silver medal at the England Athletics Under-23 Championships.

Her success as a young runner landed her a scholarship at University California Berkeley where she could compete on one of the most competitive running circuits in the world, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). So in 2015, at age 21 she moved across the world to live the California dream. But her dreams did not go as planned. On the World Triathlon podcast, she explained how the training in college was focused on high mileage and that if you couldn't keep up with it, you wouldn’t run fast. And Georgia could not keep up. She suffered injury after injury, running 20 to 30 seconds off her previous PBs. Her experience as a college runner was, to put it in her words, “pretty brutal”. The strenuous training left her mentally and physically drained, making her fall out of love with the sport. As soon as she graduated college she was ready to move on. She moved back to the UK, hung up her spikes, and started working full time.

But four years after ending her college career, while she watched the women she had trained and competed with duke it out on the biggest stage in Tokyo, something shifted in her. Inspired, she started joining social running groups in addition to putting in miles on her road bike. She had no intention to compete on the world stage, she was simply enjoying moving and getting stronger. The logical next step, in her mind, was to sign up for duathlons. As she started racing and training for duathlons, her running times improved quickly. A year after Tokyo, she contacted her previous running coach, Trevor Painter, to ask if she could join his elite group in Manchester. This gave her the opportunity to train with some big name runners such as Kailee Hodgkinson, and continue to improve. In 2023, after she won World Duathlon Championships in Budapest, she decided to focus on her running career.

And then in the Summer of 2024 it all clicked. She won the 1500m at the British Olympic Trials in June, earning her spot to represent her country in Paris. A few weeks later, she broke four minutes for the first time at the Paris Diamond league. By the time the Olympics rolled around, she was peaking, making it through each round with confidence and running to a surprise bronze medal in the final. At 30 years old, Georgia Bell’s Olympic dreams came true in a very unexpected way.

What was the secret to her comeback?

She credits a big part of it to cycling. After suffering many injuries throughout her career, cycling allowed her to train her endurance with less impact on the body. She also credits a supportive coach. Her coach understood that biking was an important part of her training and supported her unconventional training plan. She credits her strong group of training partners in Manchester that allowed her to learn from some of the best in the world. And lastly, she says she was “lucky” to be in the unique situation where she wasn't under pressure. She wasn’t expected to make the Olympics in the first place, so for her, being in the 1500m final was already a win.

The reality is that Georgia would most likely not have found her way back to running without all of these factors, and a bit of luck. Burnout from college sports, especially running, and especially among women, is not uncommon. Although the college running route gives the opportunity to talented young athletes to train and compete at a high level while earning a college degree, most of these athletes are also on a scholarship, meaning that they are often seen as business transactions. College programs lack the incentive to develop athletes towards long term success because athlete’s success after college doesn’t benefit the programs. The result is a “strongest survive” mentality where they can afford to lose a few athletes in the process of making a few great ones. Women of college age face the additional challenge of being on different developmental path, experiencing changes in their bodies that can result in temporary stagnation instead of the expected linear athletic development of their male counterparts. In an effort to fight against this possible stagnation in performance, short term success is prioritized over their long term health. The result is eating disorders, injuries, iron deficiencies, low bone density, REDS (relative, energy deficiency in sport) and mental health issues, just to name a few . I recently read Good for a Girl, a book by Lauren Fleshman, an elite American marathon runner, which explains how sports systems, especially the college system, are not built for women and therefore have failed them time and time again. In Fleshman’s words “because the pro sports world is using a male model to determine who has potential, it is letting go of some of the best female talent prematurely”.

Georgia is a perfect example of an athlete that fell through the cracks of the sports system. In college, people most likely assumed that she just didn’t have what it took to make it, but the reality is that she wasn’t given the opportunity and the right environment to reach her potential. Just like Simone Biles, Georgia proves that a strong support system that understands your personal needs is essential towards long term success.

What does Georgia want us to learn from her story?

She says “If anyone can take anything from my unconventional route it is that you can get back to something you love, it is never too late”.

Okay so this is not a hot take but Simone Biles absolutely owned these Olympics. She added three gold and one silver medal to her already impressive collection of hardware. However, what is the most impressive, in my opinion, is not her performance but the story behind it. Simone has defied the odds in all possible ways.

In Tokyo in 2021, Simone was set to dominate, but instead she made headlines when she dropped out of the women’s team competition for her mental health. She had a bad case of the twisties, a mind-body disconnect that causes you to get lost in the air and, for obvious reasons, could cause a serious injury. The media responses to this decision were cruel, some going as far as calling her a “national embarrassment”, “selfish” and “immature”. But Simone showed up to press conferences with her head held high and talked about the importance of mental health. On competition day, she supported her teammates from the stands. And, despite the backlash and the insane pressure she faced, she decided to compete in the balance beam final with a modified routine that eliminated twists and she took home the bronze medal. But her gymnastic story doesn't stop there. 

Most would agree that her legacy after the Tokyo 2020 games was already iconic. She had accumulated six World Championship all-round titles and seven Olympic medals, four of which are gold. So why did she make a comeback in Paris 2024? 

She did it for herself, and for the love of the sport. 

After Tokyo, she took a step back from competition and training and, as she mentioned in her recent Netflix documentary, was unsure if she would ever go back to the sport. She made her big comeback debut on the international stage at World Championships in 2023 in Antwerp Germany, winning her 6th all-round title. Not only did Simone defy the odds with her comeback, she defied the odds with her age. At her first Olympic Games in Rio she was 19 years old. Aly Raisman was the team veteran at the time at age 22 and affectionately nicknamed “grandma”. Gymnastic has a long history of girls reaching their peak before their 20th birthday, making Aly, who took home silver in the all-round behind Simone, a rare case. Two Olympic games later, Simone became the team veteran at 27 years old and the oldest gymnast to win the all round title since 1952. Her secret: leaning on her support network of family friends and teammates and focusing on "training smarter".

Although Simone speaks about how she currently has a positive and supportive training environment, that has not always been the case. The USA gymnastics organization has a long history of emotional, physical and sexual abuse that goes back to when Romanian coaches, the  Karolyi's were hired to lead the USA gymnastics program in 1999. USA gym cut ties with the Karolyi’s and their infamous training “Ranch” in 2018 after information was released about abuse inside their facility, including the facilitation of team doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse. After Tokyo, Simone came forward as being a victim of abuse of Larry Nassar and has been outspoken about the lasting effects this abuse has had on her mental health. She has called out USA gymnastic for allowing this abuse to happen. In her words, it was “an entire system that enabled and perpetuated his abuse”. Simone credits much of her ability to come back to gymnastics with the positive training environment supported by the World Championships Centre in Texas, a facility owned by her parents. 

I think we can learn a lot from Simone’s story. Sport has for so long glorified the grind culture. Athletes are praised for pushing through injury, taught that more is better and that perfection is the only way to be the best. Simone is an example of an athlete that became better from doing the opposite. When her mind said no, she stepped away from training and competition to heal. Thankfully, she was in an environment that supported and trusted that she could make the best decisions for herself. She has shown that taking care of the athlete as a whole, both mentally and physically can enable a longer and more successful career.

As an athlete that has been involved in high level sport for a long time, I can’t help but notice that sports organizations are inadvertently encouraging the perpetuation of the toxic grind culture through their own policies and selections. If we take women’s gymnastics as an example, it is clear that the sport has evolved immensely in the last 10 years. Women are doing more difficult elements, are much stronger and the average age of a successful gymnast has increased. So, if a gymnastics organization decided to select gymnasts based on standards from 10 years ago, it would be completely irrelevant. With a bigger focus on mental health, safe sport and positive training environments, we can assume that other sports will follow suite, which will allow athletes to continue improving past what we previously assumed to be “peak” age. But are organizations mirroring these changes through their selection processes? If selection standards don’t reflect recent data and we therefore expect athletes to reach specific milestones by a specific age based on outdated information, shouldn’t we also expect athletes to put aside their long term health and development in favour of reaching these standards? If this is the case, aren't we continuing to perpetuate the culture that we are simultaneously trying to fight?

These are questions that have been running through my head as I think of the Simone Biles success story. Of course, I realize that this is a complex issue and I am not here to provide a magic solution to these problems. However, I do believe that Simone would not be where she is today without the positive changes that she experienced in her sport environment. 

Let’s all take a page from her book.

I decided to highlight a few of my favourites, including gymnast Simone Biles, American cyclist Kristen Faulkner and British runner Georgia Bell.

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