Former Team GB sprinter Beth Dobbin says myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has 'life-decimated' her existence, leaving the 32-year-old largely bedbound in Doncaster, five years after she ran for Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics.

Dobbin, who retired from athletics in April aged 31, now spends more than 22 hours a day in bed at her family home, propped up on pillows, and says she has left the house just five times this year.

'It's life-decimating like I can't even put into words,' she told BBC Sport. 'I feel like I've lost everything. I have still got my family, but I've lost my independence, my health, the ability to work, the ability to exercise.'

She said sitting upright for long periods can leave her in worse pain, and that she often feels too ill to sleep even when bedbound. 'It feels like you are a few days from death,' she said.

She rejected the label chronic fatigue syndrome, which is sometimes used for ME. 'I wish it was just fatigue, that would be a walk in the park,' she said.

From Olympian to Bedbound With ME

Dobbin broke the Scottish 200m record in 2019, running 22.50 seconds, and made the Olympic team in 2021. She qualified for the World Championships, Commonwealth Games and European Championships in 2022.

Her health had begun to decline after she contracted Covid and glandular fever in the winter of 2021–22, infections she only discovered through later tests. British Athletics doctors found nothing wrong in tests, so she continued competing.

She ran at the Worlds with a painful throat and disrupted sleep, and felt dizzy mid-race at the Commonwealths. At the Europeans she false-started after losing feeling in her legs, later calling it her 'year of hell' in a tearful BBC interview.

Rest after the season did not help. 'The symptoms were just piling on,' she said. 'I was struggling to stand up, I was sleeping loads, in bed all the time.'

She tried to return to training six weeks later but lasted only three. After seeing four or five specialists, she said all reached the same conclusion: 'this is ME'.

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'Nothing Out There' for Beth Dobbin and Others With ME

ME is a chronic, fluctuating illness that can cause severe exhaustion, pain, sleep disruption, nausea and headaches. Everyday triggers can cause a 'crash' lasting days, weeks or months.

More than 400,000 people in the UK are thought to have the condition, although some estimates put the figure above a million. There is no cure, no specific licensed treatment and no dedicated NHS service.

Dobbin said she has sometimes had to explain ME to GPs. After her British Athletics funding ended, she waited 22 months for a face-to-face appointment with a private specialist she found herself.

Her father Jim, a former professional footballer with Barnsley, Grimsby Town and Doncaster Rovers, said the lack of options had floored him. 'I'd take her to America if I had to, but there's nothing,' he said.

Her mother Jean described a 'living grief'. 'There is nowhere to go. You go to the GP and there's nowhere for them to send you to,' she said. Her sister Faye will run the Yorkshire Marathon on Sunday to raise money for ME Research UK.

Dobbin described the future as 'very bleak', though she sees some hope in long Covid, which shares features with ME. 'It's like the whole medical community has woken up,' she said.

She acknowledged that speaking out could make her worse, noting that a blood test once left her in bed for months. She chose to do it anyway. 'Athletes are believed a lot more than the average person,' she said. 'I've got a slight platform.'

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