Updated March 21, 2026
If you watch the Peacock broadcast, the global session is every morning with Hannah England and Rob Walker. We just posted our stuff on Rob. Here is part 1 about Hannah England. Special thanks to Stuart Weir, RBR’s senior writer in Europe.
Hannah England – new role
Hannah England sometimes jokes. “The worst thing I’ve ever done in a world championship is fourth.” Second to Jenny Simpson in the 1500m in Daegu in 2011 and fourth in Moscow two years later. Add to that a 4th and 5th place finish at the 2011 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. He was a semi-finalist at the 2012 London Olympics, missing most of that season due to injury. Hannah is still very positive about 2012. “Yeah, getting injured in 2012 was a disaster at the moment. It was a terrible three months, but again trying to make the best of the situation, I still had a PB two weeks after the Games and I still had to go to the home Olympics and I know a lot of people who didn’t qualify even though they worked as hard as I did and didn’t even go.”
When asked about his memories of his time as an elite athlete, he talks about the fun at training camps, the 15-20 trips to Font Romeu in the Pyrenees, the friendships he developed during training and so on, not the silver medal at the world championships, the NCAA (indoor and outdoor) titles or the three British championships.
Married to former international athlete Luke Gunn, who now coaches some of Britain’s elite athletes, she always planned to stay involved in sport; I still want to try to give back to the athletes in my community and area, and I was also quite interested in sports governance because we had our athletes’ committee and I got quite energized trying to make a difference. He served as Chair of the UKA Athletes’ Commission and Vice-Chairman of UK Athletics.
The move to media began when established commentator Steve Cram asked him to work with him at Euro Cross while he was still competing. “It was the first thing I did, and I think, yeah, I really enjoyed it, but I was still competing. So I said. “I’m not in Euro Cross so of course it makes sense to go and comment if I’m not racing.” Then I forgot about it for another year. Then the epidemic disrupted everything.”
He describes his approach in the early days like this. “If I can somehow get free track and field training, I’ll grab it with both hands. That was my mantra in 2019. I looked like someone was going to pay for my flight there, put me up in a hotel, I’m gone.” Once he realized that people were willing to pay him to go commentate, and that he could actually make a job out of it, it got better and better.
He says he feels lucky with the timing. Although she knows women in the industry who talk a lot about having to struggle to find work, she came at a time when there was a desire for more female voices. “The fact that I reached a really good point in my career. I felt very welcomed and excited.” I’ve known Hannah for 15 years and she’s always been a little understated. The main reason for his success as a commentator is that he is very, very good at it.
Hannah is very happy with her life, balancing her career, motherhood and lending her experience and wisdom to some of the athletes her husband coaches. “I think I’m still doing what I’m doing. I’m very, very lucky to have been able to work at the biggest events in our sport: world championships, diamond leagues, European championships. I’m really lucky that I get to choose what I want to do. I know I have to work hard to stay in that conversation and stay someone people want to hire to commentate. So I think it would be kind of intimidating that I’m game for anything. I don’t feel like I have more of a purpose. And balancing that with having a daughter and helping my husband when he does his coaching. I think we can do enough and it’s a lot of fun. And I think particularly when Luke is training really high-level athletes. That’s why I want to leave space. I’m an annoying perfectionist. It helps, but it can be annoying at times.”
In Part 2, Hannah discusses how commenting works and the challenges it presents.
Hannah just launched the Podium Athletic Podcast with Richard Newman and Kathy Smith.
Podium Athletics – Podcast – Apple Podcasts
