Lucy Armitrage

Happy birthday to Great Britain’s 800m runner Lucy Armitage, who took a British Championship medal this summer.

At the Novuna UK Athletics Championships in Birmingham on 21 June, Lucy ran 2:00.45 for bronze, a personal best, in a final won by Georgia Hunter Bell in a championship record. She arrived at those championships off a 2025 season most athletes wait a whole career for. She took her 800m best from 2:07.12 down to 2:00.96 across five separate personal bests, won the British U23 title, and wore the GB vest at the World University Games in Bochum, where she ran 2:03.02 in the semi-final.

The best detail in the whole story is that she was never supposed to be an 800m runner. Lucy planned a 1500m season in 2025, ran one 800m, and changed her mind. Her own account of the BMC race at Trafford where she first went under 2:01 is worth repeating: at 200 to go she realised she still had something left, so she decided to kick. That is the instinct nobody can coach into an athlete, and she is coached by a man who has known her long enough to let her use it. She left Leeds Beckett and came back to Manchester specifically to work with Dave Rodgers again at Wythenshawe Park, and eleven months later she was on a British podium.

She is doing all of this while training as a midwife at Manchester Metropolitan University. Two-minute 800m running and clinical placements are not a combination many people attempt, let alone survive.

Happy birthday, Lucy! Many happy returns of the day, and here is to a great deal more of that last 200. And so say all of us. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇬🇧