“Once you become a champion instead of a medalist, it shifts something. I used to think a medal was the best thing ever. Now I’d probably be a little disappointed with just a medal. That’s a blessing and a curse.”

My guest for today’s episode is Georgia Hunter Bell. In March, at the World Indoor Championships in Torun, Georgia won gold in the 1500m, completing a remarkable arc from Olympic bronze in Paris in 2024 to World Indoor silver in Tokyo in 2025 to world champion this spring. She did it as part of one of the most extraordinary 28-minute stretches in British athletics history, with Keely Hodgkinson and Molly Caudery becoming world champions in the same session.

Georgia only went fully professional in April 2024. Before that she was working a corporate job that was about to transfer her to Sydney. In the two years since, she has put together three World Championship podiums, has run personal bests across the 800m and 1500m, and built one of the more unusual training models in elite middle-distance running while still averaging about 30 miles a week, doing long bike rides instead of second runs, and apparently ending most track sessions on the ground.

In this conversation, caught from the middle of April camp in South Africa, Georgia walks through the full arc of what it took to go from bronze to silver to gold, the European Indoor heartbreak in 2025 that set up Torun, what she learned from last year’s Tokyo World Championships and what she felt crossing the finish line as world champion.

We also get into the outdoor season ahead with Commonwealth Games and European Championships on home soil, the 1500m European record. I also get into the awkward and wonderful question of whether she wants to be in Keely’s 800m world record race and her own self-belief in attaining that. Plus, where the world indoor title sits in the athletics title pyramid.

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Host: Chris Chavez | ⁠⁠@chris_j_chavez

Guest: Georgia Hunter Bell | @georgiahunterbell

Produced by: Jasmine Fehr | ⁠⁠⁠@jasminefehr

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