Georgia Hunter Bell, Not Amy Hunt, Should Be Leading the Sports Personality Race

Amy Hunt captured hearts and headlines in Birmingham. But judged across the whole of 2026, Britain’s quieter athletics star has achieved something greater.

By Ian Dovaston

The clamour has begun. Four European gold medals in one crowning week and Amy Hunt — the “academic badass and track goddess” of her own unforgettable phrase — has been propelled towards favouritism for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Entirely understandable.

But also entirely premature. The British athlete who has made the strongest sporting case for the award in 2026 is Georgia Hunter Bell.

This need not become an argument against Hunt. What she accomplished at the European Championships was exceptional. She won the 100m, the 200m and gold in both the women’s and mixed 4x100m relays. No athlete had previously won four gold medals at a single edition of the championships. It was historic, exuberant and wonderfully watchable.

But Sports Personality of the Year should not be decided by which athlete gave the most quotable interview, generated the most arresting photographs or accumulated the largest number of medals at one meeting. It should recognise the outstanding British sporting achievement of the year. No doubt there will be those who want to force Josh Kerr’s remarkable mile world record into the conversation. Keely Hodgkinson still has time to get in on the act. And knowing her as we do, she will try.

But Hunter Bell’s season demands far closer attention than it appears to be getting.

This morning, even The Guardian’s comment page joined the coronation, suggesting Hunt’s four European golds might secure further recognition as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. On the sports pages, athletics correspondent Sean Ingle described her as the overwhelming favourite, well ahead of Kerr and the footballers Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham. The appreciation is justified. But the rush to judgement is not.

Let’s look at the facts. Georgia Hunter Bell is being pushed to the back. And yet hers is also a story of immense inspiration and redemption: a career relaunched through Saturday morning parkruns, showing young athletes, once dispirited by the lonely and ruthless demands of the sport, that there can be a way back. Showing, in effect, that there is not only one path to greatness. That is an inspiration to all, not just those in sport.

The arithmetic initially appears to favour Hunt: four gold medals against Hunter Bell’s three. Yet medals are not interchangeable counters. Their level, their setting and the athlete’s individual contribution all matter. Two of Hunt’s four golds came in relays; all three of Hunter Bell’s have been won individually, at three separate major championships.

Hunter Bell began her golden year by becoming world indoor 1500m champion in Poland. It was her first global title, achieved in 3:58.53 — a British indoor record, surpassing the previous mark of Laura Muir. No mean feat. She defeated an international field and became the best in the world. At the same championships, Hunt’s 60m campaign ended in the semi-finals.

Hunter Bell then switched distance and won the Commonwealth 800m title in Glasgow. That switch matters. The 800m and 1500m may sit beside one another on an athletics programme, but they impose markedly different tactical and physical demands. Ask Keely Hodgkinson, our Olympic 800m champion, who does not contest 1500m at senior championship level.

The same, of course, can be said of the 100m and 200m, between which Hunt switches. But Hunt won silver in the Commonwealth 100m, behind New Zealand’s Zoe Hobbs. In case we missed it — because it was not available live on wall-to-wall, free-to-air television — Hunter Bell won gold over two laps, beating the reigning world 800m champion Lilian Odira by more than a second and controlling the race from the front.

Then came Birmingham. While much of the attention gathered around Hunt and the sprinters, Hunter Bell controlled the European 1500m final before closing with a 58.44-second last lap. She won in 4:07.78, completing a sequence of world indoor, Commonwealth and European gold medals in the space of five months.

That is three major international championships contested and three individual titles won. There was no medal shared among a quartet and no additional opportunity created by entering a relay version of the event. On each occasion, Hunter Bell stood on the start line alone and finished as champion.

There is also extraordinary versatility in what she has done. She is simultaneously the world indoor and European champion at 1500m and the Commonwealth champion at 800m. World Athletics currently ranks her among the leading women on the planet in both events — third at 1500m and fourth at 800m. Hunt, outstanding though she is, is ranked fifth at 200m and eighth at 100m.

Hunter Bell is now preparing for an 800m race in Zurich featuring Keely Hodgkinson, Audrey Werro, Femke Broeders-Bol and world champion Lilian Odira. Such is the quality of the field that a challenge to Jarmila Kratochvílová’s seemingly immortal 1:53.28 world record is being discussed. Hunter Bell belongs in that conversation because she belongs in that race.

That does not mean she is certain to break the record, or even that she will be the favourite in Zurich. Hodgkinson and Werro may lead the assault on the clock. But Hunter Bell is one of the handful of women deemed capable of surviving a pace that could carry the event into territory it has not visited for 43 years. No comparable world-record conversation currently surrounds Hunt in either the 100m or 200m.

Hunt’s four European golds make for an irresistible headline, but they should also be examined rather than merely counted. Her two individual victories were magnificent. Her two relay victories were shared accomplishments. Hunter Bell’s three major gold medals represent three complete championship campaigns: heats, tactics, positioning, judgement and the repeated burden of delivering the decisive performance herself.

Nor has Hunter Bell been collecting titles in a quiet corner of the sport. Women’s middle-distance running may currently be the most compelling area in world athletics. Hodgkinson is the Olympic champion. Odira is the world champion. Werro has just run 1:53.80, the third-fastest 800m in history. Broeders-Bol is a European champion and record-breaker. Hunter Bell is not observing this golden generation from its margins. She is one of the women defining it.

The year is not finished, either. At September’s inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hunter Bell could add another global crown. It would be her fourth major gold of the year. Having already become world indoor champion, she has a realistic opportunity to finish 2026 with two global championship titles. Hunt may yet produce another spectacular performance herself, but on present rankings she will face a much steeper task in overcoming the very best American and Caribbean sprinters.

There is something revealing about how rapidly the Sports Personality discussion has shifted towards Hunt. She is young, charismatic, candid and supremely comfortable with the language of modern sporting celebrity. After winning four golds, she celebrated with champagne and a KFC — a characteristically incongruous combination of glamour and takeaway that somehow felt entirely on brand.

She memorably declared after winning world silver last year: “You can be an academic badass and a track goddess.” Newspapers know what to do with her. Television knows what to do with her. In an age when visibility can easily be mistaken for supremacy, she arrives ready-made.

Hunter Bell offers a less immediately marketable but arguably more remarkable story. She left athletics for five years, built a career in cybersecurity and returned through ordinary running and parkruns. At an age when many track athletes are contemplating retirement, she has become a global champion and one of the central figures in the most fiercely competitive event in women’s athletics.

If the word “personality” in the BBC award is to be taken literally, Hunt’s expansive confidence may give her an advantage. But that has never really been what the title means. Sports Personality of the Year is not a prize for possessing the loudest personality. It is the public’s recognition of a sporting year — and personality can reside in composure, resilience and quiet authority as readily as in swagger.

Hunter Bell’s personality is evident in the way she races. She does not need to announce herself at full volume because, when the bell sounds, she possesses an increasingly formidable certainty. In Birmingham she took control, trusted her strength and dismantled the field over the final lap. There was no theatrical flourish required. The performance supplied its own eloquence.

Hunt should unquestionably be celebrated, and she deserves her place on the Sports Personality shortlist. Her Birmingham quadruple was one of the great achievements in European Championship history. But the present rush to crown her risks allowing one dazzling week — and the publicity surrounding it — to obscure the athlete who has sustained the higher level of achievement across the entire year.

The choice ultimately depends upon what we want the award to recognise. If it is the most infectious public presence, the most dramatic photograph or the largest medal haul from a single championship, Hunt has an overwhelming case. If it is the British athlete who has repeatedly conquered the strongest available opposition, across different distances and on increasingly important stages, then Hunter Bell’s case is stronger.

Amy Hunt was the star of Birmingham. Georgia Hunter Bell has been the outstanding British athlete of 2026. One generated the louder headlines; the other has won a world title, a Commonwealth title and a European title — and may not yet be finished. When the Sports Personality votes are cast, that quieter excellence deserves to be heard.

(Ian Dovaston is a former athletics correspondent.)