Isla Norman-Bell: An 18,000 kilometre journey to Team GB selection

When Isla Norman-Bell was five years old she began to dream of one day going to the Olympics as an athlete - fast forward 19 years and, although the sport may be different, her Games dream is about to come true in Paris.

The 24-year-old playmaker is part of the Great Britain women’s sevens squad who are in the French capital putting the finishing touches to things ahead of their three days of competition kicking off on Sunday in the Stade de France.

Before that the men’s sevens get their Games underway half an hour after football kickstarts the Paris 2024 Olympics tomorrow [Wednesday], Thursday and Saturday with the opening ceremony on Friday.

When we talk about sportsmen and women we often talk about their journeys, but for Norman-Bell it really was a journey - an 18,000 kilometre one post-pandemic from New Zealand to England to be exact - that kick-started her road to Paris.

Having grown up in Auckland and Rotorua, she had been studying at the University of Auckland around Covid times and had managed to spend some time studying in Sydney too, excelling at Touch, XVs and sevens.

She made it into the New Zealand Black Ferns sevens development squad at one stage too, but then she decided to head back to the land of her birth.

“I was born in Gillingham before I moved to New Zealand with my family when I was really young, but I have family links in England and Scotland,” she explained.

“When I came back over to England at the start of 2022, at first people could have seen it as a bit of a risk, but I knew it was the right thing for me to do and I was determined to make things work with my rugby.

“Coming into the England Sevens set up at first was tough, but I am not afraid of hard work and getting to the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022 showed me that I was on the right track.

“After that things obviously changed with England joining up with Scotland and Wales to form the GB Sevens programme.

“Bringing everyone together like that two years ago was a big step and there have been a lot of ups and downs, but I think we have learnt so much on the world series [now known as the HSBC SVNS] that has left us in a good place heading into these Olympics.

“Last summer the European Games in Poland was so important for us because getting gold meant that our place at the Olympics was already assured and we could start to plan and build for Paris from there.

“Since then things have been steadily building and now we want to try and make our mark in Paris.”

After finishing fourth at the 2016 Rio Games and at the last Olympics in Tokyo, Great Britain certainly will be out to make their mark on this event in a bid to push for a podium spot.

And, if captain Emma Uren and her charges have a chance of doing that then Norman-Bell could be key.

She has taken her game to the next level in the last 12 months or so and head coach Ciaran Beattie said: “Isla has been unreal for us this year.

“In the first year of the GB Sevens programme in 2022/23 she just kept herself to herself and cracked on with her rugby, but this year she has opened up a bit more and, more recently, explained to us all what it means to her to be going to an Olympics to represent Great Britain.

“When she talks about it and her journey to get here you can hear the determination and emotion in her voice and she is so passionate about this programme.

“This could be her Olympics really - she is an exceptional player, she has been incredible for us of late and is only getting better.”

High praise indeed and it is clear that Norman-Bell is very focused ahead of this showpiece tournament.

“It was such an amazing feeling to get the message through to tell me that I was going,” she explained.

“For me, this has been something that I have dreamed of since I was so young. Since I was five years old I have always wanted to go to the Olympics, so to be able to say now that I am is super special and so cool.

“Back then rugby sevens wasn’t a thing in the Olympics so while I was growing up in New Zealand my Olympic dreams were about competing in athletics because I did a lot of sprinting when I was younger.

“I know this is an experience that I am going to enjoy and take in as much as I can and it is an honour for me to be in Paris to represent myself, my family, my friends and everyone that has supported me to get to this point.

This is the biggest sporting event in the world so to be here with Great Britain means everything to me, it really does.”

So, how did Norman-Bell’s road to this level of rugby begin?

“I played Touch from about the age of five and then when I was nine my Touch coach’s son and a few of the other boys in my team were playing rugby union,” she recounts.

“At that age, they were moving up in terms of the size of the pitch, so they needed a few extra players and my coach said to me ‘Would you like to try?’ and I said ‘I’d love to’.

“Previously I had played football, hockey, athletics as mentioned and pretty much every other sport as I was pretty active, but I hadn’t tried rugby as yet and I really wanted to because my family had a big connection with the sport and we all loved it and still do.

“I played with and against the boys until I went to high school and then when I was in my teens I was able to keep playing because in New Zealand there was a good set-up for girls’ school teams and representative rugby which was good.

“Things went from there and I still get the same buzz playing now as I did when I was a young girl, it’s just the best sport and sevens is so exciting.”