Mickey Mouse Double Threshold wrote:
Bell was doing a lot of bike training between 2015 and 2022 - she won a duathlon world title.
That's not to say its not still...
1. insanely suspicious
2. frustrating seeing the British press constantly push this "working in IT, did a few parkruns, now in the Olympic final" storyline
Would love it if you were able to get a clear answer from her WHAT exactly she was doing between 2015 - 2022. It clearly helps her wider reach if there's ambiguity and the mainstream narrative can be pushed, especially at present when there's little mainstream suspicion.
I suspect she was doing a whole lot more training than has been let on - still doesn't make the jumps in performance any less doubtful, but at least we'd have some more clarity!
It's quite easy to look up a website called Power of Ten, which has Georgia listed as still running a number of 800s and 1500s for her US university in 2017. In 2018, she did an 18.39 park run. In 2019, a 16.34 5k and 35.32 10k on the roads. Then we had a lot of races cancelled due to COVID lockdowns but in the year prior to her breakthrough, she won her age group in the world dust in championships (which has a 10k run at the start and a 5k at the end) in a time that would placed her high up the elite field. I believe her 10k time in that championship was in the 33 minutes tange.Qualifying requires a number of duathlon races too.
I think the 2015-2022 gap is a highly exaggerated. She seems to have had a few years off serious middle distance track running but little time off from intense racing and volume training.