‘My world got ripped in two’: Emerging from the darkness of a cancelled Olympics

Team GB sprinter Beth Dobbin was in peak form when the pandemic hit. Now she is rebuilding for another tilt at Tokyo

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Two months from Tokyo, Olympic hopefuls are finally allowing themselves to see the light at the end of the tunnel - but many are still secretly troubled by the darkness of the past year.

Beth Dobbin was in peak form when the pandemic hit. The 26-year-old sprinter had a later breakthrough than most and was at long last hitting her stride.

Dobbin has epilepsy, and her medication came with career-hindering, energy-zapping side effects. Finally, after a lengthy seizure-free period, doctors gave her the option of coming off the prescription for the first time since getting diagnosed in her early teens.

What happened next shocked even Dobbin. In 2018, she smashed Sandra Whittaker’s 34-year-old Scottish 200m record, then bested her own achievement three more times.

She set an Olympic qualifying time in 2019, giving her a shot at being named to Team GB - then along came Covid, postponing the Games by a year.

“It’s actually so traumatic,” Dobbin candidly confessed. “I know athletes are speaking about it between themselves, but I don’t think many are speaking about it publicly, how much you…” she trailed off.

“I feel, and a few of us have spoken, I feel like you’re grieving almost. And I know it sounds selfish to say when literally people are grieving, people have lost their lives, and it’s been horrific.

“But from an athlete point of view you’ve lost the most important year of your life. It blows my mind, because each year, if you were able to have the Olympics every single year, you would not have the exact same medallists, because athletes run into injuries, and things go well one year and don’t go well another.

“So my heart bleeds for all those athletes that training was going really well for them last year, and this was just thrown into the mix. Personally, myself, my training was going really well last year.”

‘Really well’ is an understatement. Dobbin’s meteoric rise saw her earn her first GB vest in 2018. A year later, the British champion was on the start line at the world championships in Doha, where she earned a semi-finals berth.

Visitors to the Loughborough gym where Dobbin worked started to recognise her not as the woman who greeted them at the front desk, but the athlete they’d just seen on TV taking on the likes of Dina Asher-Smith. One day, she came in to find her picture blown up over a whole wall.

“People would come up to me and be like, are you the same person on that wall? And then I would get really embarrassed,” admitted the humble athlete, adding “but it’s nice you’ve been recognised because you put in a lot of hard work.”

That graft began on most days around six or seven AM, when Dobbin would check in for one of her two jobs at the gym—reception, or her other “ever so glamourous” role, where she’d sit in a “mini little box thing” and press a button to let people in. A full four-hour workout followed, then bed.

The next day, she’d do it all again.

Dobbin still works the security cube from time to time. She’s grateful for the flexibility, though there are fewer shifts going these days—another consequence of the pandemic.

She’s trying not to dwell on the past, but admitted it’s easier said than done.

“I don’t think I’ve quite got over that. Back to, what could I have done if it had been last year? Could I have gone there in the shape of my life? You just don’t know whether that was your peak season and you’re never going to get to relive that form.

“Obviously you have to get over that and start afresh this year. And I definitely feel better now I’ve started racing, but for a long time I could always reflect on how my training was going last year and just think, god, what could have been if it did all go ahead last year, and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get over that.

“I know that sounds quite dramatic, but I know I won’t get over it until I’m on the start line for the Olympics this year, kind of thinking it has happened, I am OK, and I have made it.

“There’s worse things in the world. But when your sport is your world, it literally got ripped in two.”

Monday marked the start of National Epilepsy Week in the UK. While Dobbin, who was inspired by world champion Dai Greene’s own journey with disorder, was grateful to be free from medication, she stressed that everyone’s situation was different.

She said: “It might be a case of trying something that potentially works a bit better, then I definitely think it can not get in the way of your everyday life.

“Hopefully I can just inspire people. It is going to get better, because you have a lot of dark days in epilepsy, especially at its worst. I’m a big believer in that it will get better eventually.”

Brighter days are on their way. She just needs to stand on that starting line to be sure.