The British 1500m champion reflects on an eventful few months and discusses her plans to go all in on athletics in the coming year.

From underwhelming to unbelievable, Sarah Calvert’s season has been quite a ride.

The 24-year-old Livingston athlete won the BUCS 1500m title in May with a slow – relatively speaking – 4:21.10. Later that month she ran 4:14.85 for third at a BMC meeting in Bury. “It was all just pretty standard,” she says. “I’d been really happy with how consistent my training had been but it wasn’t really translating into races.”

That all started to change in June when she ran a then 800m personal best of 2:00.32 in Vienna. In early July she front ran a then 1500m best of 4:08.14 at the BMC Grand Prix in Watford; in late July came 1500m silver at the World University Games (4:20.18) – the first Scottish athlete to reach the podium in an individual event at the Games since 1997 – and in August she won her maiden senior British 1500m title, a memorable victory in 4:16.27 that was described by commentators as a “fairytale”. It was a fairly accurate narrative.

Objectively, Calvert had come from nowhere to beat household names like Laura Muir but, from a personal perspective, the University of Edinburgh postgraduate medicine student had validated her decision to give the sport “one last shot” after a series of injuries and lack of progress.

Her resilience was never in doubt. She had spinal surgery for scoliosis when she was 15 and couldn’t exercise for a year. She made her Great Britain and Northern Ireland debut at the 2019 European Under-20 Championships but barely ran during the Covid years that followed.

Her return brought a series of impressive performances in 2023 and she was selected for the European Under-23 Championships, won a middle-distance double at the Scottish Championships and ran a then PB of 4:10.60 for 1500m. Although she successfully defended her Scottish titles in 2024, she couldn’t match the form she’d enjoyed the previous 12 months.

“I was in a bit of a slump with my running and I didn’t really know what to do,” she says. “Part of me thought I should just give up and run for fun because it wasn’t working – I thought maybe it was just my body’s way of telling me that – or I could try one more thing, try a new coach and just give it one last shot.”

Calvert linked up with University of Birmingham’s Luke Gunn in September 2024 and believes that her training consistency has been key to her progression this year, coupled with the benefits of her summer break from university.

Now, with the incentive of two home championships in 2026 – the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the European Championships in Birmingham – Calvert has opted to take a year out from her studies to focus entirely on athletics.

“This season has given me confidence that it could be possible [to qualify for both events],” she says. “I’ll run and see where it takes me, and then when I start working as a doctor I’d like to give 100 per cent to that, too. I thought long and hard about it, but it made me think that, if I could go all in on this for now, there are so many gains to be made.”