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What does a hitherto 1500m specialist do when they cannot stop winning over 800m? Call the expert, of course. Back when she concluded a remarkable first full season as a runner with Olympic 1500m bronze in Paris last summer, Georgia Hunter Bell’s path appeared to be set. Why change a successful formula?
But change she has, and victory over 800m in London on Saturday provided a second win in her past two Diamond League races over the distance, having won in Stockholm last month.
This is where the problem has arisen for September’s world championships in Tokyo. Should she stick with the event in which she won her Olympic medal, should she target the shorter race over two laps, or should she attempt an audacious double that has increasingly fallen out of fashion over recent years?
Helpfully, she has the perfect sounding board in her contacts book: “I might actually reach out to Kelly Holmes and see what she thinks.”
Holmes, who memorably won Olympic 800m and 1500m gold in 2004, initially contacted Hunter Bell after the Paris Games last summer. The relationship has since developed into something akin to a mentor and a mentee. So, after triumphing over a strong field at the London Stadium in 1min 56.74sec – the second-fastest time of her life – Hunter Bell is keen to hear what Holmes thinks of it all.
“Doing the double [at the world championships] is an option because the schedule’s actually quite generous for it,” she said. “There’s proper days off; one event completes before the second starts. But I just think it’s really hard and you might stuff your chances at both. So I don’t know. A lot of people can have their opinion but there’s very few that have actually done it. I’d like to see what Kelly has to say about it.”
There is an additional factor. Shorn of her training partner, and Olympic champion, Keely Hodgkinson – who is expected to return from a hamstring injury in the coming weeks – 800m times have somewhat stagnated. By contrast, increasing numbers of 1500m women continue to break new ground.
“You’ve got to look strategically at the events,” said Hunter Bell. “The 1500m has got even faster than last year. I didn’t think that was possible, but it has again. Whereas the 800m, at the moment, is not as fast as it was last year. So if you’re trying to get a medal, what is actually the best thing to do?”
Elsewhere, the anticipated battle of the British runners failed to materialise in the men’s 1500m as the young Kenyan upstart Phanuel Koech upset the 60,000-strong sellout crowd by outkicking reigning world champion Josh Kerr in the home straight to claim victory.
Koech, 18, had never run a 1500m race before last month, but now owns three of the six fastest times in the world this year after triumphing in a meeting record of 3:28.82. Despite tracking him for most of the race, Kerr was unable to keep pace in the home straight, finishing second in 3:29.37. Former world champion Jake Wightman came fourth, while George Mills fell with 200m remaining.
Ever bullish, Kerr remains confident that the world title he claimed from Wightman will remain in Britain. “Yeah, 100%,” he said. “The title lives here and it will continue to live here for the next year.”
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Of his own run, he added: “Good, not great. In general, I really liked how I felt throughout the whole race. I was waiting until about 120 to go, but that power wasn’t quite there. We’re getting there. I know I can make a big jump in the next couple of months.”
Charlie Dobson took the scalp of British compatriot and Olympic silver medallist Matt Hudson-Smith to win the 400m in a personal best 44.14, becoming the second-fastest European of all time in the process, while Morgan Lake won the high jump in a season’s-best 1.96m.
Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred ran a world-leading 21.71 to beat Dina Asher-Smith in the 200m, and America’s Olympic champion, Noah Lyles, finished second over 100m behind Oblique Seville of Jamaica, who was well clear in 9.86.
Before the action began, the British men’s 4x400m team of Roger Black, Iwan Thomas, Jamie Baulch, Mark Richardson and heat-runner Mark Hylton received an extraordinarily belated gold-medal upgrade 28 years after the 1997 world championships. Britain initially finished second, only for the American winners to later be stripped of their title after Antonio Pettigrew, who died in 2010, confessed in 2008 to doping between 1997 and 2003.
“On the one hand it’s a real shame it’s taken this long,” said Thomas. “But on a personal level, it’s really beautiful today. My son is here today. I didn’t have any children back then. It felt really special.”
