A Liverpool marathon runner was one of the first two picked to compete with Team England's athletics squad in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in July.
Jonny Mellor, 35, heard the news days after winning the Manchester Marathon in April, where his time of 2:10:46 nearly matched his lifetime best, and beat the qualifying standard for all three major championships this summer. For a month, Jonny and teammate Georgina Schwiening kept the news a secret until Thursday, May 5, when England Athletics announced they'd been selected for the Commonwealth Games.
The international event will be held in Birmingham from July 28 to August 8, the first major multi-sport event in Britain since the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. But Jonny's route to such an elite level wasn't clear cut.
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Growing up, he was "one of those kids who had to do every sport in school", whether it was football, swimming, hockey or cricket - a broad background that's put him in good stead. Jonny, who joined Liverpool Harriers athletic club at 17, took running more seriously as an option when he had more time to train as a student, winning some British university championships in the process.
What ultimately propelled him to a semi-professional level of running was being made redundant after university, giving him the time to train and build the confidence necessary to pursue it as a career. The 35-year ran the London Marathon instead of competing in the last Commonwealth Games, held on Australia's Gold Coast in 2018, after narrowly missing out on making the initial Team England squad.
He was forced to sit out the British Olympic marathon trials in Kew Gardens last year due to an ankle injury. But now Jonny is looking forward to tackling the hilly, twisty course in Birmingham, running against Scotland's Callum Hawkins, Wales' Joshua Griffiths, and teams from Kenya and Uganda, who he expects will put up strong competition in the marathon on July 30.
Jonny said: "With marathon, it's so brutal, because you train for three months, and if it goes badly on the day or you don't make the start line, which is what happened to me last year with the Olympic trials - it's just so cutthroat. So when it does happen and you have these highs - you don't often have many marathons when everything just goes smoothly and goes to plan - so when you do nail one, it makes it all worthwhile, and then you get the opportunity to compete in championships, which is great."
Both Jonny and his teammate Georgina are looking forward to being one of more than 400 Team England members competing on home turf, with familiar voices of friends and family in the crowd, and no need to travel "halfway across the world".
With the marathon course including two laps of a route south to Bourneville, followed by a four-mile loop through Birmingham city centre, there's a chance for fans to catch a glimpse of athletes more than once. Georgina, a former world junior duathlon champion, said: "Competing at a home games is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Having my friends and family there, I couldn't actually imagine a better race to have.
"And it's on a Saturday, so people don't even need to take a day off work. I'm hoping all my friends and family are going to come and watch. It's just so, so nice to have people to wave to in the crowd just to boost you every couple of miles."
Kelly Sotherton MBE, team leader for the England Athletics Team at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, said: "It's a real privilege to announce our first two Team England members for track and field for Birmingham 2022. I'm excited to have Georgina and Jonny in our team. They performed outstandingly to qualify and be in this position. With less than three months to go, the excitement is building more so now and announcing the marathon team today makes it even more real."
Team England's chef de mission, Mark England OBE said: "It's great to welcome Jonny and Georgina to Team England for Birmingham 2022 this summer. They have both set strong qualifying times at the Manchester Marathon and it will be exciting to see them build on that in front of a home crowd in a few months' time. I'm looking forward to watching them race on Saturday, July 30 and seeing them 'Bring it Home' for England in Birmingham."
