So acute was her disappointment at missing out on a place in Team GB for Paris 2024, Erin Wallace could barely bring herself to watch more than a few minutes of last summer’s Olympic Games. Despite having dipped under the Olympic 800m qualifying mark with a personal best run of 1 minute 59.20 seconds last summer, she fell victim to the fact that women’s 800m running in Britain is currently stronger than it's ever been, with even a sub two-minute effort not enough to secure selection.
Coming so close to becoming an Olympian before missing out was, admits Wallace, a bitter pill to swallow at the time. “I found it really hard to watch Paris,” the Glaswegian says. “I watched the girls I train with but then I'd turn the television off.
And when the second season of the 'Sprint' documentary came out, I knew it centred around Paris, which I knew would upset me, so I didn’t watch.” As the disappointment of missing the Olympics faded, Wallace was able to take many positives from last year, notably that she broke two minutes twice in one season for the first time in her career and ran world-class times more regularly than ever before. She took those positives into her winter training block which, given the company she mixes with in day in, day out, has been invaluable.
Wallace is part of Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows’ Manchester-based training group, which also includes Olympic 800m champion, Keely Hodgkinson and Olympic 1500m medallist, Georgia Bell, as well as a we.