Hunter Bell silver lining, Ballon d'Or & HMRC of football podcasts

0:02Gabby:This is a Global Player original podcast. It was Team GB's worst World Athletics Championships in over 20 years. No gold medal for the first time since 2003 and only five medals in total. After a record haul at the Olympics, why did Team GB come 27th in the medal table? Some people, and this is very British, blaming the weather. It was wet. And humid. Instead of dwelling on the doom and gloom, because Mark in particular always wants to look at the bright side of life. Today, we're going to be joined by an athlete who did give Team GB something to cheer about. Georgia Hunter-Bell is there. This is not one yet.

0:40Gabby:Keeley Hodgkinson has got to go. Odira is still coming. Lillian Odira of Kenya is going to come through to take the gold medal. Lillian Odira takes it. Georgia Hunter-Bell the silver, Keeley the bronze. Georgia Hunter-Bell won silver in the 800 metres. She pipped her training partner, Keely Hodgkinson, at the line. So that's her fifth straight podium at a global championships. Not bad for a woman who had quit the sport for five years and only went full-time this year. Welcome to The Sports Agents.

1:21Gabby:The Sports Agents with Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman Hello Mark Hello, all good? Yeah, you're here I mean, we're in the same studio it doesn't happen very often but we're in the same studio I'm very excited about meeting Georgia Bell in the flesh today I've been a big fan since she burst onto our consciousness as a kind of like, you know, collective athletics presenting team at the beginning of Olympic year, because that's when she was in the world indoors in Glasgow. And I think I might have told you this story. Kirsty Walk, as in the great journalist, Newsnight presenter, texted me and said, I'm staying with my friends in Scotland because their daughter's racing in the world indoors.

1:58Gabby:Because her dad is a political journalist. Yeah, he was at Channel 5, I think, for many years. And so they were good colleagues and friends. And of course, she had a fantastic championships, but that was her on her return to the sport. And of course, you're always intrigued then when people have missing years in their CV. What was going on? And we later found out she'd quit the sport. So I love the fact that she's come back and that she's been able to get to the very top of the game. And I'm also really excited about having her on because she's over 30 and the other podcast I host is all about midlife.

2:27And now she's nowhere near, but I love it.

2:29Gabby:But you're going to book her in for 10 years' time. I'm a bit obsessed about people doing stuff after their kids, you know? And it's not all, you don't have to do it all in your 20s. And I'm also fascinated about, and this will all come out with her, about, you know, when we talk to Danny Mills about his son George and the sacrifices there. And George obviously is probably at a very different stage of his life to where Georgia is here and how those sacrifices play into where she's at in her life. I'm trying to make a link, and I think I can, with the Ballon d 'Or winner. Oh, right. Because he's a little bit older.

3:02He's no kid. Obviously, he's had a few attempts at a career that seems to have stumbled. And even last season, he was stumbling. And I love the idea you can win a Ballon d 'Or at the end of a season where you got dropped in the second Champions League game of the season because your manager felt you just weren't producing the goods. And you can go on and win a Ballon d 'Or at the end of it.

3:19Gabby:I think that is the best bit about it, actually, is not an obvious winner, not an obvious candidate and someone who, as you say, has come back from being dropped. and he's a bit further down the list, but just to see Scott McTominay in the top 20 and he finished 18th after everything he had to put up with towards the end of his Manchester United career and see how he has been rejuvenated as well. It's all about redemption. Well, I quite like that because for many, many, many, even Rodri winning it last year and not being, you know, being in a position which doesn't always garner the headlines and is not the showbiz position, but just being recognised and for years and years and years it was only ever going to be one of two men that was that was going to win it both of whom were incredible talents and incredible players in Ronaldo and Messi but that doesn't mask the fact that there are others performing to a very high standard just in different positions who aren't garnering the headlines so I quite like I quite like that it was never a massive I was not moaning I was talking about this I know I was talking about thing when we were growing up.

4:35Gabby:Even though it was still there and people were winning it and, you know, Michel Platini and so on and so forth. But I don't remember. It is very hard to win if you don't win the Champions League though, isn't it? Yeah. It would appear. Yeah. There's a very strong corporate link to who runs the awards and who hosts them. Before we get into our guest today, we should just also give a nod to what is going to happen at the end of this week. And that is a Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham with 82 ,000 tickets sold. The record number of tickets sold for any World Cup, record number of eyeballs, 3.3 million peak at the weekend watching the semifinal.

5:07So whatever happens on Saturday, and England will hope it's victory for them, it's been an enormous success. And the crowds that have gone there have absolutely loved it. So they were hoping it was going to be their game changing moment, women's rugby. It feels like it might be.

5:20Gabby:And also the final is a fascinating final. And I suppose what will be really interesting will be to see how Canada react to this massive crowd, the partisan England crowd, obviously. They dump New Zealand out, which on the one hand you wouldn't have expected, but given their world ranking. They were two in the world. They are two in the world. So you've got the two best sides in the world and their story of how they've managed to get here and the contrast in funding between England and Canada. You know, if you put your sort of home favouritism leanings to one side, it'd be a great story if Canada won it.

6:02Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because there's been a lot made of them crowdfunding. But yesterday I received a message, I'm not going to say who it was from, asking if they could speak to whoever produces the rugby and the BBC and they were from Rugby Canada wanting to set the record straight on this. I think they feel the narrative has been that they've not done a good job by their women because this crowdfunding story keeps coming up. So I will be interested to hear what they mean by that because obviously we know that some of them are semi-professional but quite a lot of them do play in the English professional league.

6:34You know, there's four players alone who play for Exeter. So whatever it is, I think they've done a very good job of playing the underdog and that is exactly how they want to walk out of Twickenham. They want to see it as David and Goliath.

6:45Gabby:Yeah, yeah. And even if they are funded a bit better than maybe this narrative, there's still a massive gap in how the England women are funded compared to them. England are the best funded union in the world with more professional players than any other union and they also have arguably the best league in the world and they expect, and it is that weight of expectation on Saturday, I think, which is the only thing that can stop them in a way because as one of our pundits said, if England play at their best and Canada play at their best, England win. But England haven't played at their best yet in this tournament.

7:16So they are going to have to really find a performance against a Canada side who looked very impressive against New Zealand.

7:23Gabby:Remember, you can catch up on all of our episodes on YouTube, Global Player, or wherever you get your pods. Hit subscribe or follow so you don't miss a show. As always, you can get in touch with us via email, thesportsagentsatglobal.com or on our socials or via the link in the episode description. And please, would you rate follow and subscribe. It really does mean a lot to us. Next up, we turn our attention to the ray of light in Team GB's disappointing World Athletics Championship, silver medalist Georgia Hunter-Bell. The Sports Agents.

7:54The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Georgia Hunter-Bell, congratulations. Such an incredible championships for you. Welcome to the Sports Agents. Thank you for coming in when you're less than 24 hours home. Thank you. No, thanks for having me. Yes, time is a bit of a fluid concept at the moment. Long haul flight straight from the track after a karaoke night out. But yeah, very happy to be here.

8:22Gabby:Could you fall asleep during this interview? It wouldn't be the first time I've been talking to someone, but could you fall asleep during this interview? I'm feeling okay now, but I'll probably crash pretty hard later. So there was a karaoke party, was there, at the end? That was indeed. You know, we were really looking forward to that. We know Japan is famous for karaoke. So luckily Nike got a kind of dive bar just for us at the end. So it was all our family and friends. And yeah, it was really good. And your social media was just brilliant. Your kind of diary of the trip because you appeared to go out in your kit.

8:51Yes, I just did not think I was going to have time because obviously you finish the race, you have your lap of honour, then you have media, then you have anti-doping. And by the time we finally got out, I just thought, you know, I'm ready to see everyone. I don't want to go home and change. So Keely went and changed and she looked so cute. And I was like, you know what, I'm just committing to this. I loved it. I thought, I wonder if I could kind of get away with that outfit. It's fantastic. This was a really brilliant championships for you personally. We'll get on to Great Britain as a whole. But you had a decision to make early in the season, whether you'd focus on the 15 that you won an Olympic medal in or the 800, which not only was it going to be kind of new territory for you on the global stage, but your main rival is your training partner.

9:34who's the Olympic champion. That's a bold decision to make. It was. And it was a tough decision. We, in the months leading up to it, pretty much every day we were going back and forth between myself, Jen, my husband. We were just trying to discuss what would be best and looking at the fields. And actually the 800 had looked like the weaker event all year just because a few big names were out, including Keeley. And then actually as we got closer to the event, it started to get a lot more competitive and by that point we'd already committed but more I just had to focus on myself and Jen and Trev pulled me during some sessions back in May and said we're really gonna have to think about just doing the 800 um I know it hadn't been in our plans but you're responding a lot better to the training and we think you have a serious shot there so the seed was planted and yeah I'm I'm glad I made that decision but it was hard so so two things on

10:31Gabby:that how sort of private did that decision have to be given obviously you're you're in the same camp you know and and then secondly when you talk about eventually making that final decision based on how you respond into the training how different is training for an 800 to a 1500 so it wasn't very private to be honest you know we were very open in the group and it was constantly a point of discussion like everyone was giving their opinions and stuff including keely yeah yeah absolutely including keely like i asked her advice as well you know like we're good friends and respect each other as athletes so of course i was getting everyone's opinion who i respected um so it was yeah not that private at all and then in terms of training it was just a little bit different like i am a strength-based 800 meter runner so my training does it quite different i'm an 800 1500 hundred meter runner as opposed to a 400 800 meter runner which keely is which keely is yeah exactly so it was just nice more mentally i think to once i made that decision and that weight was off my shoulders then i could lock into the 800 i had been trying to do both at diamond leagues on the same week and it is just tough like it is a different kind of leg turnover and a different rhythm but um that kind of period from the diamond league final all the way up into japan just gave me a big block to focus on pure 800 speed stuff yeah so once you've made that decision you obviously got a pb in the season leading up to it as well and things were going very very well where were your ambitions honestly what where would they set for this championship i really thought that i could medal so i thought that going into it i really had something to show in the 800 I think the Diamond League final gave me a lot of promise running 155 off kind of a 1500 meter endurance block I was like surely now if I apply myself I can be one of the best 800 meter runners in the world and we'd had inklings all season of that from winning Diamond Leagues and things like that and then as we got into the camp and the championship a bit more that's when I really started to believe that I could win.

12:40I really, especially after the semi-final, felt very good and thought that I had done the least amount of work to get there, which is crucial when it comes to the heats. You know, you can have a really hard heat and you're battling and you're running a really fast time and that can be exhausting when you have to come back for a race literally the next day. So I felt like I was in a pretty conserved spot, which means I would have the most to give for the final last year in Paris really showed me what I could do once you kind of allow yourself to believe that you can do well because a lot of the time you're just putting yourself into a box of like oh no I can't I can't possibly do that like I I haven't done it before these women are much faster than me and then actually changing your mindset to be like well why can't I do somebody do you talk to I have in the past I haven't at the moment but in the past I have seen a sports psychologist to help me work through that and it's definitely something that I will do again in the future this season I haven't but I have found this season a lot tougher mentally than last year um last year being a complete underdog going into the championships knowing I was in really the shape of my life but at the same time no one was really paying any attention to me it's like the dream position my I was Georgia I kept saying she's gonna get a medal and um yeah yeah I was sat near your dad with your family at the Olympics while our studio was.

14:07And watching them watch you in that final was just a joy. That's so nice to hear. I mean, yeah, I feel like if you were rooting for me, like it was a fun race to watch because I left it late. But yeah, like that position, I just felt like last year, every time I raced was a free hit, no pressure. And it was just improving, improving, improving. And then this year has been kind of interesting because there's now expectation. and I've had a few bad races where I've put myself out there and it's gone wrong, particularly with European indoors where I was the dead set favourite and just completely messed it up and came forth and missed the medals altogether.

14:47So once that seed of doubt gets planted, it can really spread. The other thing which is really interesting is the dynamic in your training group, right? So your confidence in thinking I could win this. You've got the Olympic champion in the race. She is also your teammate and you've said she's your friend, but you also maybe were privy to the knowledge that she told us afterwards that we all know she's had an injury and she's only had a couple of races, but she's also had some kind of stomach complaint. So there's a bit of you, is there, that's computing all of that thinking she's she's she's beatable today.

15:17Yeah, I do think it's, you know, everyone has to have a really great day to win. So even the best people, if they're having a slightly off day, and someone else is having an amazing day, that can change the dynamics and you see how small the margins are. So definitely those kind of things. I think more for me, I was just took the keys off training. So when we were training together, we were, there were reps that like I was winning, where usually maybe Keely would win. where so that just kind of helped me start that whole belief process of okay maybe I can do this and that's that's a very good indication because not everyone trains with the Olympic champion exactly so I'm that kind of beyond you know kind of Keely as a person just more for me I was like okay well this is where this is the level of what the best in the world is and I'm I'm mixing it here.

16:07Mark knows I'm slightly obsessed with people who get to 30 and still start you know or start achieving great things your experience of being kind of over 30 is actually different because you had a few years where you weren't racing at all and you know it's been well documented that you came back to your career in or running in lockdown and the miles in the legs therefore are not what perhaps an athlete of your age would normally have experienced yeah absolutely i mean trev really focuses on that he thinks you know i'm very under raced compared to most people that would be 30 competing at the Olympics or World Championships which is definitely true I also just do a lot of stuff on the bike so my intensity and impact is a lot less but I also think it's interesting because the narrative is obviously oh you know athletes once they get to 30 surely they're past their best years but increasingly I'm not seeing that on the global stage I mean if you look at the medals that Team GB won three of us were 30 out or over out of the five that we won and if you look at faith kip yegan you know best in the world but even the sprinters like noah lyles i think he's 28 like i just do think it is a very common misconception and sports science and just being able to recover better yeah the technology the shoes um especially in endurance events you know that people are going well into their 30s now and we see that they're actually performing their best then so it's kind of exciting to be part of that when he describes

17:37Gabby:you is under raced it makes you sound like a horse i know i mean that phrase is used so often for race horses does that mean does that mean because you know that and don't have those miles in your legs because of the break does that give you longevity in your career plan i mean are you looking a lot further ahead i think so yeah i mean obviously the goal is always the olympic cycle and it will come around very quickly we're already a year on since paris so the goal is definitely leading up to the next Olympics in LA. You'll be how old then? I'll be 34. Was that not how old Kelly Holmes was when she won a double gold in the 15 and 800 metres?

18:13Exactly.

18:14Gabby:You know that thing about expectation. Yeah, it comes quickly. I spoke to Kelly a lot about it last year and she's been very helpful while we were making the decision about what I should do here. But she was interested in my story particularly because she was 30 years old when she got her bronze and then she went on to do the double Olympic gold at 34 so she you know was like you're on exactly the right track like don't let anyone put you off or anything like that and you can see that you're improving so that was yeah that was really nice to get that feedback from her and for anybody who doesn't know why you stopped part of that was injury that was just getting you down yeah as a as a young because you you were an english schools champion so it wasn't like it wasn't like you just did a park run and went oh gosh i'm quite good i know i feel like sometimes maybe people read the papers and think oh she went from couch to 5k to Olympic medal and it's not quite that I was yeah I was like the English schools champion British University champion like so had all this promise went over to the US on a full track scholarship and just never ran faster than I did in the UK lots of stress fractures lots of injury and then I just graduated at 23 and it was just kind of I thought if I haven't made it by now then I never will so I just need to quit and get a proper job and I had really mentally checked out of running as well I had completely lost like any joy for it yeah and so I just thought that's it I'm never gonna run on a track again did that I mean I'm fascinated by what the American college system does to people you know I see so you see so many young golfers for example making their debut at 1890 i think how the hell are they doing this in a major they must but and then you find out oh you well they're already in the college system and they're used to it and this that and the other yeah was it a very unforgiving environment for for an athlete it's a tough one because on the one hand it is amazing it is literally the american dream like you are going to these gorgeous universities the facilities are like nothing you've ever seen you're being flown on like the university planes to championships sold out stadiums i remember the thing that happened never happened when when i played for hull university we went away to liverpool national express literally i remember the thing that won me over on my recruiting trip is you would come to the locker room after training and by the time you came back in the afternoon your washing had all been done oh my gosh you are kidding seriously and they so it's just the way you were looked after in some ways is unbelievable but then you are a business deal and that's what's tough so it's like okay you're with us for two years we need you to race cross-country indoor outdoor as much as possible and so it's kind of like when you would be in the UK if you had a bit of an injury or the start of something they would say you know we're not going to race but out there it's like we kind of need you to race and that's how people do get into these bad situations of running and getting injured yeah and and so the love has gone you've started work what were you were actually doing to kind of keep fit because you can't just let your lungs heart muscles everything just you know go to park I mean I did I did for a year I needed a complete mental break I think and so I was living in San Francisco I might have gone for a run a couple of months later but it was not competitive you know I just really took that time and then after about a year I was like, you know what, I am actually missing running.

21:43So I just got back into easy runs. And then I took up cycling in lockdown, which lots of people did. And I just started to really enjoy that. And then the proper lockdown hit where you actually couldn't do anything. That's when I started to get really fit because what else was I going to do on the weekends? So I would be like going for running half marathons. I would be jumping on Zwift. I would be doing long cycles on my own. Just anything to like get out of the house. And then before I knew it, the fitness had actually come back really quickly, which I thought was quite interesting. All those years of just running as a kid, it kind of was almost like muscle memory.

22:21And at that point, that's when I reached out to Trev again, who was my coach originally before I left. And what did his wife Jenny say when she found out he'd had a chat with you? She said, that ship has sailed. Why would we work with Georgia again? Did she? Yeah. Which me and Trev were laughing about that when we were in the karaoke bar the other day. I was just like, thank God you decided to wear the trousers that day. Ignore your wife. Because usually Jen does wear the trousers. So it was like he put his foot down and said, you know what, I just have a feeling. So, yeah, very lucky that that happened.

22:54Gabby:Did everything else, though, fit in with your life? And again, I go back to the Danny Mills interview from last week of the sheer discipline that's required. Not far eating virtually the same thing every day at the same time. and everything that comes with being that professional elite athlete. Was all of that easy to get back into? It was after I had taken a break. I mean, the hardest thing for me was I was working a full-time job in tech sales for seven years. So I only quit my job last April to see how far I could go with running. So the last couple of years of that were pure discipline. There was not any hour of the day where time...

23:32How were the sales going? Sales were going good. I mean, that's the thing. the job was like if you didn't hit your quota every month you'd get fired so it was like an intense job yeah yeah it's tech sales it's ruthless so you had that on one hand and then you were trying to hit your times on the other hand yeah um but i it wasn't a surprise to me that when i quit my job last year that i had a big increase in my performance because it was like i was finally able to absorb all of the training that i was doing well the rest is missing from

24:00Gabby:that agenda isn't it and that is the thing as well psychological rest yeah yeah and i'm like seeing physios in the middle of the day which I obviously would have never been able to do going on the altitude camps just all of these things could finally you know have their effect and yeah it just goes to show how much of a difference it makes going all in. So I guess the the area that we haven't I've touched on a couple of times we've not really got into is the overall result from Team GB which has been much documented actually I was quite interested that the World Athletics Championships has been at a strange time of the day here so I think it wasn't towards until towards the end that people started really kind of noticing that it was on and obviously were looking forward to your race in particular but the fact that the medal tally and no goals is the lowest since 2003 Paris has has really grasped the attention over the last couple of days hasn't it yeah how did it feel within the team I think it was it was tough out there because we had some big names that got injured like it was really gutting to see what happened to Molly and to Josh and so there were kind of these performances that you were pretty confident about then suddenly they weren't even gonna be able to be competitive so that was tough and we were getting a bit further into the championships and it just felt really strange because Team GB is like last year in Paris it was every day was so exciting and we had so many great performances to report on so you know we could feel it in camp but we knew we still had some good races to come And obviously, I think the main headline was just to not get a gold is tough.

25:26Yeah.

25:27Gabby:I mean, everybody's swept along at the Olympics. It's not then just what you do in athletics. It's, you know, what the swimmers have done or whatever. And you just get completely swept along. Yeah. It doesn't work in the reverse, does it? I mean, you're individual in your race. Yeah. You're not going to have a negative mindset because of what's happened elsewhere, are you? No, but I do think when the team, I'm one of those people where when I see the team do well, like it definitely gives me a buzz. Like I watched Amy Hunt get her silver and like her celebrations and stuff. And that made me so up for the race that I had the next day.

26:04I was just like, I want that feeling, like that pure elation. Like I look, I really want that moment. So I do think, you know, the positive, the positivity does spread. Was everybody talking about the Grand Slam track situation out there? People weren't necessarily out here, but we have in general. I mean, lots of the athletes that we race against, you know, were also involved in Grand Slam. So it definitely has been a topic of conversation. I myself did the Philadelphia event, which was the last one. So I got to experience it a little bit. And yeah, it's an interesting one.

26:40Gabby:Where are you at with it? Are you in communication with them? Do you know what's going to happen? Are you all right after everything that's gone on? I mean, I think I'm not angry or anything like that. Like I enjoyed the event and I really respect when I heard about the idea. I thought it was a fantastic idea, especially having a good double like I have across the 815. I thought I was kind of made for someone like me. And I just really was excited to just have another league that was being brought in that was going to give athletes great financial opportunities and exposure. And so I think the overall feeling when I speak to athletes is more just like disappointment.

27:21It's not anger. It's just like we're kind of hoping it all does work out. Are you owed? Yeah, I'm owed some money. I think everyone I've spoken to is owed money. I don't believe anyone has been paid that I've spoken to personally. But we're just hoping it works out. We really don't want it to fail. so we're just you know hoping we get some good news whenever that might be um but yeah not holding

27:47Gabby:my breath at the same time well thank you for coming in especially you know however long it is after you got off a plane and congratulations thank you so much thank you very much and best of luck for the next few years ahead i mean no pressure but um obviously um we've mentioned kelly ham yeah all right i thought you meant to get in 10 years time come back on your midpoint podcast that's what I thought you were going to go with I was thinking in three years time you know the double is it the double going to be on the agenda yeah potentially but also next year is an exciting year for athletics because we've got the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and we've got the European Championships in Birmingham so there's two big home opportunities yeah would you have to choose do you think which one you go for no I'll do both I'll definitely do both yeah I don't know if I'll do both events at both Commonwealth that would be something else that would be a lot but I'll definitely be there any event where it's on a home turf you can't miss it Excellent