DREAMS ON HOLD
» Meet the Olympic 800 metre hopeful who spent 11 weeks of lockdown training on the streets of Gloucester,
ADELLE Tracey should now be in the final stages of her preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, but Britain’s number two 800-metre runner has been treading a very different path.
She spent 11 lockdown weeks in Gloucester, staying with boyfriend Ben Coldray’s family enjoying “hill reps on Chosen Hill, runs in Zoons Road and loops around Tescos”.
The 26-year-old usually lives with Ben in London, but they decided to decamp to Gloucester a week before the lockdown measures were implemented.
“We have a one-bedroom flat outside London, with no garden,” said Adelle.
“Ben’s parents have a treadmill and so we decided to come down and we were here for 11 weeks - a bit longer than we expected.
“I have been doing what I can, and it was nice to have Ben around to do the runs with me.”
Ben is a former Stroud AC and Gloucester City AC runner who was part of coach David Farrow’s successful stable of runners in his junior days alongside the likes of Emily Pidgeon, and was also coached by Chris Frapwell.
He also played football for Gloucester Primary Schools and his grandad Rob, who died in 2016, was a legendary former Gloucester City and Cheltenham Town player - and has a road (Coldray Close) named in his honour on the site of the Tigers’ former Horton Road stadium.
The Games were set to start on July 24 and, pre-lockdown, Adelle’s preparations for what she hoped would be her Olympic debut were in full swing.
“I had opened the year strongly,” she said. “I felt I was in a good place.
“I went to Kenya for an altitude camp and had run two minutes indoors.”
That was an Indoor 800m PB of 2.00.23, a World indoor Championship qualifying time, and then she ran 2:37 over 1,000 metres at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix at Glasgow’s Emirates Arena.
So she was set to go to the World Indoor Championships, which were scheduled to be held from March 13-15 in Nanjing, China - but theyhave, like the Olympics, now gone back a year. “I was going to race in the USA to get the Olympic qualifying time, but to be honest we were all waiting for the Games to be postponed,” Adelle said.
“Thankfully the Games were postponed, and not cancelled altogether, and it was a massive relief.
“I think with all the restrictions, a lot of athletes would have struggled to be at their best.”
So now Adelle will re-start her preparations and look to mirror what she had already done as much as she can in the run up to summer 2021.
“It will be a similar build-up again,” she said. “I will be building into the summer, doing what I can.
“It’s a case of making the best of it. If I get the opportunity to race this summer, I will.
“But the delay will also give me the opportunity to work on those tiny one per cents.
“The Olympics is the pinnacle. It comes every four years and everyone wants to be there, so I hope it all goes smoothly.”
But Tokyo, if she gets there, will not be her first Olympic experience.
That came eight years ago, in London, when she was one of seven young athletes chosen by a British Olympic legend to light the cauldron at the opening ceremony, along with Callum Airlie, Jordan Duckitt, Desiree Henry, Katie Kirk, Cameron Macritchie and Aidan Reynolds.
The Olympics is the pinnacle. It comes every four years and everyone wants to be there