Phoebe Gill receives advice from former Team GB star Iwan Thomas

St Albans’ Gill, 17, qualified for Paris 2024 as she became British 800m champion in June and will be one of 14 teenagers on Team GB this summer.

The middle-distance ace has developed quickly after winning Commonwealth Youth gold last year in Trinidad and Tobago.

“17! She is the second-youngest athletics competitor we have ever taken to an Olympic Games,” Thomas, who'll be working with Eurosport and discovery+ for their Olympics coverage, said.

“She looks like a school girl who is having the time of her life, and she is going to the Olympic Games, what a talent. 

“She has nothing to prove and nothing to lose and if she can get into the final and get in the mix then wow, what a story. 

“I hope she takes her homework with her!”

Gill will be alongside experienced teammates on the start line of the 800m, with reigning Olympic and world silver medallist Keely Hodgkinson the favourite for gold.

Also returning to the event is Scotland’s Jemma Reekie who finished fourth in tokyo before capturing world indoor silver in Glasgow earlier this year.

Gill’s rise has been meteoric, breaking the British U17 800m and 1500m records last year before breaking the 45-year-old European U18 800m record in May.

Thomas added: “I think the people around her need to look after her a little bit, but if I was her coach or her parent, I would tell her to go and have the time of her life. 

“This is an experience to go to the Olympics at the age of 17 and get a medal or even to make the final that is the icing on the cake. 

“She is for the future so a Games like Paris for her is all about learning the routine, the warm-up track, the call rooms, the pressure, the crowd. 

“All things that she may have not experienced at this level, she should take it on board and use it for the future. 

“But why not now? She is there, she has got the chance.”

Watch every moment of Olympic Games Paris 2024 live only on discovery+, the streaming home of the Olympics