Laura Muir

Muir earned her international debut in the year 2011 at the European Cross Country Championships, where she was a member of the gold-winning Great Britain junior women’s squad. She was nominated for the Daily Record Young Athlete of the Year award at the end of the year.

Muir ran the 800 meters for Great Britain at the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow with a personal best time of 2:00.83 to advance to the semifinals. At the Diamond League competition in Paris in July 2014, she raced the 1500 meters in 4:00.07, shattering the 27-year-old Scottish record held by Yvonne Murray. She ran the 1500 meters in 4:11.48 and placed fifth at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing. With a timing of 3:57.49, Muir won the Diamond League competition in London’s Olympic Park on July 22, 2016, shattering Kelly Holmes’ previous British record for the 1500 meters. After a few days, she became only the third British woman to win a Diamond Trophy when she finished second in the 1500 m in Zürich, with the third fastest time ever by a Briton.

Muir surpassed the 25-year-old British indoor record held by Liz McColgan on January 4, 2017, while competing in the 5000 metres for the second time ever in Glasgow, clocking 14 minutes and 49 seconds. Muir’s record-breaking brilliance continued in March, when she swept the European Indoor Championships in Belgrade. She won gold in the 1500 m race, breaking Kelly Holmes’ British record and Doina Melinte’s 32-year-old championship record along the way, and then won gold in the 3000 m event the next day, shattering another championship record. Muir raced in the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham in March 2018, where she earned a bronze medal in the 3000 m and a silver medal in the 1500 m two days later.

She became the first British woman to ever win the 1500 m gold at the European Championships Berlin 2018 in August, earning her first-ever major outdoor medal. She followed this up with her second Diamond League title over 1500m in Brussels, her first since the competition switched to a championship system. Muir won the silver medal in the 1500 meters event at the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in August 2021 with a timing of 3 minutes 54.50 seconds, breaking her own British record.  Since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, it was Scotland’s first individual Olympic medal in any track event.

Her greatest rival is Genzebe Dibaba, who is an Ethiopian middle-distance runner. She is a Rio-Olympics silver medalist in the 1500m discipline. In addition, she is a gold medalist in this event and the bronze in the 5000 meters at the 2015 World Championships. In an interview with ‘The Guardian’, Muir had stated that she felt uneasy while competing with Dibaba. It was also during the time when Dibaba’s coach, Jama Aden, was being investigated by anti-doping authorities after being arrested in Spain in the year 2016. The police investigators found EPO in the hotel room where a training camp run by Aden was staged.

Muir was born in Inverness, Scotland, on May 9, 1993. Laura Muir has lived in Milnathort, Perth and Kinross, since she was three years old. Along with her two years younger brother Rory, she attended Kinross High School. When she was 11 years old, a Muir schoolmate joined an athletic club. Young Muir also became intrigued and joined the group. She initially trained twice a week, focusing primarily on sprints. But as time went on, she increased this to three, four, and even five times a week, shifting her focus more towards the middle-distance group. She graduated from the University of Glasgow in 2018 after studying veterinary medicine. Hayley Haining, a veterinary pathologist, distance runner, and Commonwealth Games teammate, was one of her professors.