THE DUAL ADVANTAGE

Baffled by a rumour that Olympic runner Georgia Hunter Bell does most of her training by bike, Tom Davidson investigates just how well running and cycling can complement each other

- Tom Davidson

Georgia Hunter Bell's Instagram username, @georgiabelltheduathlete, has been causing confusion among her followers. “I tried to change it the other day, actually,” she says. But Instagram informed her that, as a verified Olympic athlete, she’d need to contact the platform’s big bosses. The “duathlete” suffix hints at a life beyond running – although many fans assume it refers to her dual-discipline versatility on the running track – she is an Olympic bronze medallist in the 1,500m and a World Championships silver medallist in the 800m. “That’s not quite what duathlete means, but I see where they’re going with it,” she concedes.

A scroll through the tiles of her profile starts to tell a more intriguing story. Between the running shots and celebrations beneath vast stadium crowds come flashes of something else: bicycles. There’s Hunter Bell on a Wattbike, a Zwift indoor trainer, and a deep-blue Canyon road bike, descending a mountain on clear-skied Majorca. “Once you delve into people’s stories, you usually find that they’re quite multilayered,” the 32-year-old says.

Hunter Bell’s story came to me in a PR email, the sort I get 20 times a day and usually ignore. I’d seen her race on television, but knew little about her, and assumed she spent most of her waking hours pounding roads and tracks in her running shoes. I was wrong. “Though best known on the track,” the PR email stated, “she does 70% of her training on the bike.” On the bike? But she’s a world-class runner. I was mystified and somewhat skeptical. “Could I meet her?” I typed in reply. And so, two weeks after Hunter Bell won silver at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, I find myself sitting across from the Olympian and her black Americano in a cafe in Clapham, South London.

Saved by the bike