Georgia Hunter-Bell Takes Silver in World Championships

Chiswick-raised athlete edges out friend and rival in 800 metres

Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter-Bell celebrate their medals. Picture: British Athletics

September 21, 2025

Georgia Hunter-Bell has delivered a career-defining performance in Tokyo, edging her friend and the Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson to claim silver in the women’s 800m final at the World Athletics Championships. The Chiswick-raised athlete, who only returned to elite competition after a five-year hiatus, clocked a personal best of 1:54.90—just 0.28 seconds behind Kenya’s Lilian Odira, who took gold in a championship record time of 1:54.62.

Georgia’s narrow victory over her training partner, who finished third, secured a British medal double and underscored the extraordinary trajectory of her comeback. The pair had hoped to deliver a historic one-two for Great Britain, a feat not achieved since Christine Ohuruogu and Nicola Sanders in Osaka 2007, but the Kenyan’s late surge denied them the top spot.

The former pupil of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary, Sacred Heart, and Cardinal Vaughan schools, was running parkruns in Gunnersbury Park less than three year’s ago to regain fitness after years away from the track.

Having once been a prodigious junior talent, Hunter-Bell left the sport in 2017 following a series of injuries and pursued a career in cybersecurity. It was during lockdown that she rediscovered her passion for running, eventually reaching out to coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows—who also mentor Hodgkinson—and committing to a full-time return.

Now 31, Georgia has become one of Britain’s most compelling athletics stories. Her Olympic bronze in Paris 2024 marked the beginning of a new chapter, and her Tokyo silver confirms her place among the world’s elite. She described the race as “the fastest time I’ve ever run,” adding, “I knew it would be fast from seeing the girls in the field but I was just like ‘don’t get dropped, try to hang on to get the kick in the end’.”

Leading up to the championships, Georgia faced a dilemma over which event to target—having made significant progress over both the 800m and 1500m distances. Her decision to return to the 800m, the event she first competed in as a child, proved decisive.

This season marked her first as a full-time athlete, having left her cybersecurity job after last year’s Olympics. Her rise has been meteoric: national titles, European silver, and now a world medal in one of the most competitive fields of the championships.

The British pair, both coached by Painter and Meadows, trained together, roomed together at the British holding camp, and even performed drills in hotel corridors to escape the Tokyo heat. But on race day, they became rivals—crossing the line almost inseparably, with Georgia just one hundredth of a second ahead.

Keely Hodgkinson, who has battled a series of injuries including two torn hamstrings and a grade-three tear sustained during a trip to collect her MBE, was gracious in defeat. “I’m happy for the both of us, we both got a medal,” she told BBC Sport. “It’s not what I came here for but I can’t be too disappointed.”