Georgia Hunter Bell on taking on room-mate and rival Keely Hodgkinson in Tokyo

Georgia Hunter Bell predicts the days of sharing a room with training partner Keely Hodgkinson are probably numbered.

The Paris 2024 1500m bronze medallist and Hodgkinson, who stormed to a first Olympic gold at those Games over 800m, were holding camp room-mates for the World Championships in Tokyo – where, this time, they are up against each other over the shorter distance.

The British pair have a strong friendship and usually overlap in training only once every two weeks, but as the dynamic between them changes on the track, Hunter Bell admits cohabitating and competing will eventually feel strange.

“I feel like that’s going to come in the future,” said Hunter Bell. “I think, at the moment, everything’s just good. We’re running well, we’re happy, we’re friends.

“It’s just a cool opportunity to be in and we see it as a positive rather than anything negative. No matter what race you’re in, when you stand on that start line you always have to believe you can win, and you know she will feel very much like that.”

Hodgkinson came back from a year-long injury absence to set a world-leading 1:54.74 in Silesia last month, while Hunter Bell has the third-fastest time, 1:55.96, behind Swiss European under-23 champion Audrey Werro.

Hunter Bell weighed up the possibility of doubling up at these championships, but after consulting with coaches Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter, her husband and a host of British veterans including Dame Kelly Holmes, who won 800m and 1500m at the Athens Olympics, she decided on just the shorter distance.

She said: “I’d be taking out the bins, thinking about it, showering, thinking about it, just constantly on my mind. So it’s been a big relief just to make the decision and commit to be honest.”

The 31-year-old is open to employing team tactics with Hodgkinson in the heats, which begin on Thursday evening in Japan, but says it is each woman for herself in a final.

“I think you know everyone is standing on the line as their own person in the final,” she explained. “Keely and I run the 800 in very different ways anyway, which could end up kind of working in our favour actually.”

Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell have drawn comparisons to another vaunted British middle-distance duo, Lord Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram, the respective 1500m gold and silver medallists at the 1984 Olympics.

Cram, also one of the former athletes Hunter Bell consulted during her doubling-up dilemma, recently told the BBC he believed the biggest threat to Hodgkinson was her own training partner.

Hunter-Bell added: “I actually have been watching back a lot of the old races recently and I was speaking to Steve and Seb about it.

“(A British one-two) would be amazing. It’s such a cool part of history that they have together. And, yeah, we’ve got to get through the rounds and do all of that, but obviously we’re hoping to do well.”