Mellowed Twell regaining fitness and drawing on positives after Games heartache

Steph Twell had always figured that the pivotal moment of this past summer, indeed of her entire career, might arrive within the Olympic Stadium. Her forecast came true, except it unfolded in Helsinki rather than London.

The Scot stood alone and asked her body once more to tune out the pain and allow her to run untroubled. Frustratingly and horrifically, the request was rejected.

Four months after Twell’s dreams of a home Olympiad were dashed, she is almost fully healed. Scars, however, remain. Some of the traumas were self-inflicted in a single-minded goal to succeed on the highest stage, but she is also a victim of a system which puts performance over long-term returns.

Arriving in the Finnish capital last June for the European Championships was a miracle in itself. The previous year, the Commonwealth 1,500 metres medallist had broken her ankle in a cross-country race, interrupting a prodigious rise through the ranks. Months of rehabilitation were required with pins and screws holding her together.

Her speed had returned but it was a precarious recovery. Two weeks before, as the Olympic trials approached, she felt a niggle. “They gave me a cortisone injection and it didn’t work,” she recounted. The medics tried again, and although it proved more effective, more time to heal was required.

“So I phoned Charles van Commenee and said: ‘I can’t race.’ He went: ‘what?’” The Dutchman, who recently stepped down as UK Athletics head coach, demanded that Twell prove her fitness before the Europeans. Once selected, there was no turning back. “I felt it was my last chance to get the [Olympic] qualifying time,” she admits.

She was patched up and sent on her way. “The day before the race I had an anaesthetic injection to mask the pain. It went into my joint, I’d stride, then feel it, so I’d say, ‘give me another one and find the exact place’, so I could run.”

Helsinki, though, was too much, too soon. Twell recalls that day, the pain, and the sense of dread. “Everyone was getting ready,” she said, tears flooding her eyes. “We all lined up and I saw the other athletes looking at me limping as we walked around to the start. I said to myself: ‘you can do this’, but I did a stride and my leg was just lame. I had to walk off. I knew if I did 12 and a half laps, it would be totally screwed. That was the moment I knew it was over.”

She hobbled away, inconsolable. There would be no London. It was, she says, her bravest decision, but also the toughest. Furthermore, it had the potential to inflict permanent wounds.

Instead Twell, now aged 23, is preparing to make a tentative return. She underwent surgery to remove the metalwork, listening to her body’s pleas to recuperate in its own good time. She realises now that to do otherwise is folly. “I just expected my body to do whatever I demanded,” she stated. “It had always done it for me. It was the first time it had been dysfunctional. That was hard.”

That hurdler Dai Greene cited her fight as a source of inspiration in his team captain’s speech ahead of the Olympic revived her spirit. True catharsis, however, arrived as she spent the summer indulging in the Edinburgh Festival and the West Highland Way.

“I’ve mellowed,” she declared. “People say I’ve relaxed. My whole identity was my athletics. I feel I’ve blossomed as a person. I’ve let my hair down a bit.”

She might return better than before, or she may not. Twell plans to live in the moment but she will no longer take her health, and her sport, for granted. “When you’re in it, you don’t appreciate it,” she states. “You’re not grateful for what it gives you. The chance to travel, the chance to meet people. Having that respect for your running, it’s amazing.”