Laura Muir primed to take next step on remarkable Olympic journey

By Paul Eddison

There was a time when Laura Muir was the nearly woman of British athletics – unquestioned pedigree but always missing out in her quest for global podiums.

That all changed at Tokyo 2020. The Milnathort athlete showed she can perform in the big moments as she claimed Olympic 1500m silver and she has not looked back since.

A first World Championship medal followed in 2022, as well as Commonwealth gold that same summer.

Now Muir is preparing for her third Olympics with one label dismissed and, in some ways, the pressure off.

Born in Inverness, Muir grew up in the rural village of Milnathort in Kinross-shire, where she discovered both her passion for running and her love of animals.

She started running at Dundee Hawkhill Harriers, and then went on to hone her craft at the University of Glasgow.

Animals and running remain central to Muir’s journey. Alongside becoming one of Britain’s greatest middle-distance runners, she has also completed her studies to become a qualified vet, graduating back in 2018.

Muir was surrounded by pets growing up, looking after a rabbit, a guinea pig, six rats and a dog. More than that though, in the local farming community, her speed proved very handy in lambing season.

She explained: “I remember helping out with lambing and there were little lambs on the hills. They’re fast little things, even though they’re only a few hours old, and we had to spray them to mark them with their mothers so they didn’t get lost.

“We had a great system, me and the farmer: he would drive the quad bike and, at the last minute, I would jump off.

“I’d catch the lambs, because I was quick, and then we’d spray them, and then I would hop back on and we’d be off again. Running came in handy for that.”

The National Lottery has spent nearly 30 years supporting grassroots clubs like Dundee, with more than £198m of funding invested in community athletics projects up and down the country.

Muir took up running aged 11 and made her international debut at just 18 when she competed at the European Cross-Country Championships in 2011.

Two years later she reached the semi-finals at the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow over 800m. But it was in 2014 that she truly emerged.

At the Diamond League in Paris, at the Stade de France where she will return this summer, Muir ran 4:00.07 to break a 27-year-old Scottish record that had belonged to Yvonne Murray.

She was achieving all this alongside her veterinary studies, with her preparations for Glasgow involving placements in a vet’s surgery where she was operating on cats, dogs, rabbits and the like.

"Sport is so unpredictable as well,” she said.

“You hope injuries never crop up and you get to call time when you do, but some things do happen, and if your career’s cut short, it’s good to have something to fall back on, and to continue in something you love to do."

Not everything went to plan at her home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, with an unfortunate fall after she was clipped on the final straight of the 1500m denying her a shot at a medal.

After missing out on the podium at the 2015 Worlds, she arrived in Rio at her first Olympics as a genuine medal contender and threw caution to the wind in search of the podium before finishing seventh.

When she doubled up at the Worlds in 2017 in London, Muir finished fourth over 1500m and sixth over 5000m. Although she did break Kelly Holmes’ British record over 1500m, that first major outdoor medal continued to evade her.

It finally came in 2018, when she triumphed at the European Championships in Berlin, just after completing her final veterinary exams.

With her focus now solely on athletics, Muir has gone from strength to strength, setting a new British record in Tokyo as she took silver behind Kipyegon and ahead of world champion Sifan Hassan – one of 204 Olympic and Paralympic medals won by British track and field athletes since National Lottery funding began in 1997.

Then in 2022, she added a first podium at the Worlds in Eugene, Oregon, before winning gold and bronze over 1500m and 800m at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

From the nearly woman, Muir has rewritten a story that began chasing new-born lambs on a dairy farm.

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