Following her personal best of 3 minutes 59.84 seconds in the 1500m final, Georgia Hunter Bell proudly stood on the podium at the 2025 World Indoor Championships, holding a bronze medal. A year later, that accolade, which she held so dear in Nanjing, is ready for an upgrade.

Citius Mag’s Chris Chavez reported on X, the revised results of the championship final have emerged following an anti-doping sanction against Ethiopian runner Diribe Welteji.

The new standings list Gudaf Tsegay as the gold medalist in 3:54.86, with Georgia Hunter Bell elevated to silver in 3:59.84, a promotion that also moves Australia’s Georgia Griffith, who ran a 4:00.80, onto the podium for bronze.

The entire controversy centers around the 23-year-old Ethiopian who initially held that silver medal.

On February 25, 2025, three doping control officers arrived at Welteji’s home to conduct an out-of-competition test. According to the Athletics Integrity Unit, the athlete’s husband informed the officers that she was asleep.

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Per the CAS’s report, what followed is disputed as witness accounts were “fundamentally contradictory,” with a clear outcome that the officers departed without collecting a sample. While Ethiopia’s national anti-doping body initially cleared her in August 2025, World Athletics appealed to CAS the next month, and they could prohibit her from competing at the Tokyo World Championships.

On Thursday, the CAS delivered its final verdict, suspending the Ethiopian for two years. The international body also accepted that while there were language barriers, an athlete like Welteji should have followed the regulations and negotiated during the testing visit regardless of the timing.

With the sanction, the 23-year-old also loses her 3:51.44 personal best from the 2025 Prefontaine Classic and will be eligible to return to competition before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The ban runs from July 8, 2025, to June 30, 2027. And she will be disqualified from all of her results from February 25, 2025, to the date of the CAS award.

However, for the British athlete, this was a major turnaround.

A big moment for Georgia Hunter Bell

For Georgia Hunter Bell, this World Indoor Championships silver medal means more than just an accolade. In 2024, the British athlete ran a new personal best in 1500m (4:03.54) at the World Athletics Indoor Tour Bronze event in Dortmund.

However, a month later, she secured her place in the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, following her British Indoor title in the 1500m. And all eyes were locked on her when she was set to run in the final of that particular competition.

Bell finished fourth with a time of 4:03.47. She missed the podium by a few fractions of a second, and it was heartbreaking. However, the Brit bounced back.

She secured a silver medal at the European Championships in the same distance, and she also went on to win a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics.

Coming back to the World Indoor Championships in 2025, Bell had a single goal: to make it to the podium. And with the two Ethiopian runners locking the 1-2 position, she held her ground in third, winning that bronze medal.

“It feels amazing, I am so happy. I was feeling really motivated today and really inspired by the team’s performances, so I am so, so happy…It’s tough out there, you know, it’s just you and yourself, and you have to believe in yourself,” she exclaimed.