Georgia Hunter Bell wins the Commonwealth 800 m, breaking the race with 200 to go
The England runner ran 1:59.51 at Scotstoun; Lilian Odira took silver in 2:00.58 and Sarah Billings bronze, 0.03 back, for her first senior medal.
Photograph: Georgia Hunter Bell crossing the line at the 2025 UK Athletics Championships in Birmingham, by Andrewnward, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsGeorgia Hunter Bell won the women's 800 m at the Commonwealth Games on Friday night, the penultimate night of athletics in Glasgow, in 1:59.51. She had come through the heats on Monday and the semi-finals on Wednesday, and in the final she broke the race apart with 200 m to go and nobody closed the gap.
Lilian Odira of Kenya, who beat Keely Hodgkinson in Eugene this month, was second in 2:00.58. Sarah Billings of Australia was three hundredths behind her in 2:00.61 for bronze, her first medal at a senior international championship, after sticking to Hunter Bell down the back straight. Oratile Nowe of Botswana was fourth in 2:01.29, Isabelle Boffey of Wales fifth in 2:01.44 and Shafiqua Maloney of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines sixth in 2:02.17. Caster Semenya's Games record of 1:56.70 from the Gold Coast in 2018 stood.
Hunter Bell had run a personal best of 4:18.52 for the mile in Eugene at the start of the month, eighth in the race Nikki Hiltz won, and chose the two-lap race for Glasgow. It was the right call.
The night also brought a gold on the road: Isaac Beacroft of Australia won the men's 10,000 m walk in 38:45.51, a second clear of Stephan Ndangiri Kihu of Kenya, and Eliza McCartney of New Zealand took the pole vault at 4.65 m on countback from Nina Kennedy.
An 800 m won from the front with 200 to go is the oldest plan in the book. It still needs someone brave enough to use it.
Sources: Australian Athletics; World Athletics; Wikipedia.
