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Stuart Weir
Guest
Women’s 800 – round 1
There were strong showings by British athletes in the prelims of the women’s 800, with four qualifying for the semi-finals. Remember that this is the Commonwealth Games and that the athletes are not British athletes but represent their individual nation. The qualifiers were: Izzy Boffey (Wales), Erin Wallace and Jemma Reekie (Scotland), and Georgia Hunter Bell (England). Mena Scatchard (Scotland) was the fastest athlete not to make the last 16.
Prelims, W800m, Jemma Reekie, Georgia Hunter-Bell, CG 2026, photo by Team England
Georgia Hunter Bell will be the favorite, but don’t forget that Jemma Reekie has been fourth in the Olympics. Georgia talked afterward about how the Commonwealth 800 fitted into her season and about coming back from illness.
“Getting sick is really disruptive in the season because it’s not just that you miss racing, but you’ve got to adjust training. So where you would be really pushing into the red zone, you obviously can’t do that. So we just managed it well, and I’m really happy with where I am. I am happy to be back racing. I was really looking forward to just getting out there When I heard that they were going to potentially get rid of one of the rounds, I was like, ‘no. I want the runs out’. Like, I just want to get back in racing. So, yeah, I’m happy.
Prelims, W800m, Reekie, Hunter-Bell, CG 2026, photo by Team England
“Now I want to just do my best, go out and put races together that I’m proud of. Obviously, it’s a really tough competition with Lillian Odira, and it’s my Commonwealth debut, but I’ll give it everything”.
She added that it was a special year with a second home championship, the Europeans, in Birmingham: “That’s properly home turf so that will just be so amazing. I got silver last time at Europeans, my first ever major medal, so that was huge for me; that felt like gold, but yeah obviously I want to improve on that as well”.
Georgia Hunter Bell is pretty casual in her 80m prelim win, note Jemma Reekie, photo by Team England
Asked if she had considered running the 800 and the 1500 at either championship, she replied: “Yeah, it’s an issue for me, like I’m trying to decide between those two constantly back and forth, but we decided just go for the 1500 at Europeans because it gives me enough time to recover from the 800 here and get some training. That’s the problem with racing a lot in championships: you miss out on blocks of training, so we need to keep the training up, and that will give me some time to come back for the 1500. I will double at some point but not for Europeans”.
A tough women’s 800m prelims, photo by Team England
Hunter Bell video interview (not =mine) at