The five-time Olympian is excited by the prospects of Team GB’s distance runners on the eve of the Paris Games
Jo Pavey has praised Eilish McColgan and Megan Keith, who will both be representing Team GB over 10,000m at the Paris Olympics on August 9.
McColgan, the British record-holder over the distance and 2022 Commonwealth Games champion, has had a disrupted 2024 season due to injury but she is now preparing for her fourth Olympics, having returned from knee surgery last month.
Keith comes into the Games on a high after securing her spot on the team in May with a time 31:03.02, a mark she bettered by 27 seconds two months previously to place fourth on the UK all-time list.
Pavey’s five Olympic participations are unmatched by any other British runner and track event athlete. She won gold in the 10,000m at the 2014 European Championships and became the oldest female European champion in history. She now reckons that Keith is arriving in Paris in the form of her life.
Nadia Battocletti, Megan Keith, Diane van Es (Getty)
“I have really enjoyed seeing how well the athletes are doing,”says Pavey. “Megan is going from strength to strength. She is still only 22 years old, so to run the times she has at such a young age is phenomenal and very exciting.
“It was great to see her win a medal at the European Championships and of course to run so well at cross country too. She is not afraid to front run which is a great quality and she’ll always work so hard.
“She’s earned the chance to run in Paris and she can really show the world how well she can do. She is so lovely and I am excited to see her career take off. She is still young and this will be such a valuable experience for the coming years.”
On McColgan, the 33-year-old from Dundee, Pavey says: “Eilish has shown many times how she is truly world class and her win at the Commonwealth Games really showed how competitive she can be in the closing stages.
“She has had a lot of injuries recently which is always tough to deal with, mentally and physically, so I have been really pleased to see her back running.
“She has shown so much resilience and determination to come back, including doing hours of cross training, and while her preparation wouldn’t have been as she would have liked, with her talent you can never rule her out.”
Eilish McColgan (Mark Shearman)
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