After rethinking his decision to retire and refusing to give up despite repeated injuries, Guy Learmonth is using his Montpellier base to give himself one last chance, writes Mark Woods.
The long road to what Guy Learmonth hopes will end with a race to redemption next summer did not begin in his homeland, the Scottish Borders, but across the pond in France.
Nor did it take place on the sunny southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where he has lived and trained for the past 16 months. Instead, he began in one of the remote territories that still forms an integral part of his adopted nation: gala by design but very different in outlook.
Guadeloupe, in the heart of the Caribbean, is almost 7,000 kilometers and an eight-hour flight from Paris with a tailwind. The family of Learmonth’s girlfriend, Olympic 800m finalist Renelle Lamote, hail from this remote but idyllic group of islands.
Following a track campaign in which both had to navigate the turbulent waters of injuries, they flew long distances last fall to regroup and reset for 2026.
“It’s a beautiful part of the world,” declares the 33-year-old, a four-time UK indoor 800m champion. “But it became a kind of training camp. It just started with two weeks of easy running and then slowly progressed to harder things. So I came back to Montpellier in much better shape than in 2024. And this time, I’m not injured. Fingers crossed it stays that way.”
Learmonth, twice a sixth-place finisher at the European Indoor Championships, had loudly signaled his intention to leave athletics when his all-out quest to finally secure an Olympic debut at Paris 2024 fell short.
She took an extended break, cheering her teammate on to finish fifth at the home Games. There was space to relax and unwind, but also to think deeply about whether this was really the goal. “I felt like three months was a good amount of time to not make rash decisions, but then I knew I needed to make a change.
“Talking to my family, they said, ‘Go back home.’ I was like, ‘No, I can’t do it. I can’t run the streets again. If I’m going to do it, I need to have a clean slate with everything: a whole new life, a new training, a new setup.'”
One more time. Parting ways with his Australian coach Justin Rinaldi, Learmonth moved to join Lamote in Montpellier, where he turned to his mentor. Bruno Gajer to design a reboot. The romance blossomed further.
“It was a bit risky because we hadn’t been together very long and we recently went from dating to living together,” she laughs. “But it was the best move of my life.”
However, there was a contrasting response from his body. Injury. Then another. And repeat. More misfortunes than he could bear or deserved.
“I tore my hamstring right before the season,” Learmonth recalls. “Shortly after arriving, I broke my calf in the first weeks of training. Then, with the same leg, I had a problem with my Achilles tendon, which turned into tendinopathy.”
The structural weakness didn’t just stop his training. “It was on fire for months. I had a hard time walking at times.” Fall turned to winter and he was still kicking. There was rebound for six weeks and then a nerve problem that pinched him from his quadriceps to his hip.
Gajer, Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s former trainer, kept him patient for further rehabilitation. With the Tokyo World Championships on the horizon and the qualification deadline approaching, it was urgent to get back on the court competitively.
“Bruno said, ‘I know you haven’t run away in a long time, but we have to get you somewhere,’” Learmonth recalls. “It was a lot of cross-training. I stayed as fit as I could. Bruno said, ‘We’re running out of time if you want to have a season.’ So we took a bit of a risk. It was very hard the first three or four weeks, when I was really struggling to train.
“I just persevered for a little bit and then just as things were starting to click, I tore my hamstring, a three-inch tear. And that was really the wiped out summer.”
Once again, the inclination was to drop everything, move on, and limp away.
Lamote had also been fighting, but managed to make it – just – to Japan. However, he arrived without the racing acumen necessary to advance from the semi-finals. Learmonth concentrated on a couple of runs to revive his Power 10. Then they both retired into the sun to lick their wounds and take stock.
Now, allowing for setbacks, Learmonth goes again. So it’s safer to call it a senior year. The intention is to open on native soil at this month’s EAP meeting in Glasgow and then assess whether the World Indoor Championships in Torun in March is a viable target.
The signs, although cautious, seem positive so far. “We have changed the training a lot,” he says. “Bruno has made some big changes to the whole flow of the week. I’m in a good place. And that’s how we handle it going forward.”
Few would begrudge him a final farewell adventure at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Receive applause and say goodbye with grace. Even now, his competitive streak is too strong to simply hope to appear.
“I would also love to return to a British team,” he emphasizes. “I don’t want to just get the national uniform or anything like that. I want to compete with all the teams.”
The journey back to the exit has had bumps and bends that have left Learmonth dizzy. All he asks for is a clean sprint down the stretch. “I really went through everything, all the emotions and all the ups and downs,” he adds. “I’m completely at peace with everything, with everything on the track. But there’s a lot of unfinished business and I really hope I can accomplish something good.”
