George Mills focused on bigger challenges ahead after breaking British Indoor 3000m record
Harrogate’s George Mills is keeping his feet firmly on the ground despite setting a new British indoor record on his first-ever competitive outing at 3000 metres.
The former Saint Aidan‘s School pupil ran a superb time of 7:27.92 at the Meeting de l’Eure in France recently, beating World Indoor champion Josh Kerr’s previous best time of 7:30.14, while also eclipsing Sir Mo Farah in the process.
Mills, 25, endured a frustrating Olympic summer last year, unable to do himself justice on the biggest stage of all having been hit hard by Covid-19, which he contracted shortly before the Paris Games got underway.
But, having put those 1500m and 5000m disappointments behind him and managing to reset during three months at his winter training base in South Africa, the ex-Harrogate Harrier opted to test himself at a new distance in Val-de-Reuil earlier this month.
And although happy with his record-breaking performance, which saw him win that race by a massive 12 seconds, ambitious Mills says that it is “difficult to get too excited” so early in the season, and because there is so much more still to achieve.
"Of course it is nice to start the season in such a way," he told the Harrogate Advertiser. "My goal was to run sub-7:31 as that is the qualifying time for the World Indoor Championships, and I am pleased to have managed that.
"It is obviously great to have broken the British record, and I will try to break more of his [Farah's] in the future as well. But, there are plenty of medals at European, World and Olympic level that I want to be winning, so this is just the start of that journey.
"It is really cool to have done this the first time I've run 3000 metres, but to be honest it is difficult to get too excited about anything in February.
"There are a lot of races to come this season, and right now my focus is just on getting myself into a position where I can be competing for medals at this distance at the Europeans in March and the World Indoors later the same month."
Mills' run at Meeting de l'Eure leaves him ninth in the world all-time indoor rankings, with only one European athlete – the now banned Spaniard Mo Katir – ever having clocked a faster time.
Ethiopia's Lamecha Girma is number one on that list, having run the 3000m in 7:23.81 in 2023.