But, given her recent run of wretched luck with injuries – having to withdraw from the Birmingham Games in 2022 and the Olympics two years later shortly before the events, the Glasgow native is refusing to get too excited at the prospect.<\/p>\n
“With any of these events you get this little mix of excitement and nerves,” the 31-year-old double Olympic gold medallist said. <\/p>\n
“This is a sort of landmark on route to the biggest race day that we have in 2026, so I feel all full of butterflies. <\/p>\n
“I got hit by a car before Birmingham and didn’t make it to the Games, having done the announcement, the pictures, everything, so there’s something in my chest that just feels a bit nervous.”<\/p>\n
Bell did make it to Birmingham but was a budding track and field athlete in 2014. Indeed, her standout memory is of the heptathlon at Hampden rather than anything in the Velodrome.<\/p>\n
Having missed out on the medals in the sprint, team sprint and keirin in 2022, she is determined to remedy that next summer.<\/p>\n
“I’m definitely pushing for a medal and I think that’s an achievable goal,” she said. “Training’s been going well and I’m getting better with more experience.<\/p>\n
“The Commonwealth Games is such a special race and any time we can have a Saltire on our backs, the Scottish flags waving, and my friends and family in the crowd is really special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But, given her recent run of wretched luck with injuries – having to withdraw from the Birmingham Games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-326823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}