Phoebe Gill is out for the season, by Stuart Weir
Phoebe Gill was the young athlete of the year in Britain in 2024. Few people had heard of Phoebe before May last year, when she ran in Belfast at the Irish Milers Meeting, recording a time of 1:57.86. Before the 2024 summer was over, she took advantage of Keely Hodgkinson’s absence to win the GB championship and secure her ticket for Paris, where she ran 1:58.83 in the prelim and 1:58.47 in the Olympic semi-final – all at the age of 17.
Sadly, Phoebe was unable to defend her title at the 2025 GB championships, having been diagnosed with a fibula stress fracture back in February. She took the heartbreaking but sensible decision not to compete this summer. She explained further that “it has taken time to recover due to various circumstances” and “it has been a long journey, but I’m looking forward to giving my body a proper break.”
Just over a year ago, on a press point organized by British Athletics, just before the Olympics, I had the opportunity to ask her about how a year in the lower sixth (the penultimate year at high school, studying biology, chemistry, and maths) had changed when she realized she was on course for the Olympics. She told me, “I would say it’s changed this year, but I think school’s been good at grounding me in between the hectic things that have been going on. Going to a maths class on the Monday morning after winning the British Champs was a grounding experience, and going to work experience – back at my old primary school helping out with the reception class the week after – was good for me, because I think it’s easy to get carried away with this sort of thing. So, I wouldn’t say my life feels too different, but I know that coming up to Paris now, I think things are going to change for the better. I’m getting used to all this media attention and all these big races, and speaking to these legends in sports. So it’s been different, but in a good way”.
She was equally down to earth talking about that PR in Belfast: “I would say that I knew that I could get a personal best in Belfast because I had just…
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