Team GB Olympian suffers from 'life-decimating' chronic illness and is bedbound for 22 hours per day
Former Team GB sprinter Beth Dobbin has revealed she is suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) - a chronic long-term condition which is currently leaving her bedbound for at least 22 hours per day.
Dobbin, 32, retired from athletics in April 2026 and disclosed that she was suffering from a 'serious, life-changing health issue'.
She competed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics over 200 metres, reaching the semi-finals, and was part of the Scotland team that won bronze in the 4x200m relay at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
'Things were getting worse and worse'
Dobbin, who was born in Doncaster but represented Scotland competitively through her father, former professional footballer Jim Dobbin, stopped competing at the end of 2022 after experiencing various health concerns while running.
She was defaulted from the European Championships after a false start in the final, and told BBC Sport at the time: "I've never false-started in my life. I think it was the nerves of, kind of, what shape I'm in at the moment... I wasn't actually nervous today, but I know I'm not in shape, I know I don't feel well. On the start line, I wasn't quite with it, wasn't quite myself.
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"As soon as I did it [the false start], I was like, 'What just happened there?' So uncharacteristic of me. I've never even done it in training, I'm very disciplined. It's just been a rough ride this year. It's been a year of hell, actually, and I just want it over. And now it's over."
In a new interview with BBC Sport, Dobbin has disclosed that she was diagnosed with COVID-19 and then, within weeks, glandular fever during the winter of 2021/22.
But her condition could not initially be diagnosed by British Athletics doctors, and she continued running throughout 2022 only to notice that her times were 'slightly down' - along with soreness in the glands of her neck and armpits.
Other symptoms began to appear as the year wore on and she said 'things were getting worse and worse' after she returned from the European Championships.
"I was struggling to stand up, I was sleeping loads, in bed all the time," she said. "After six weeks, I went back to training. I managed three weeks."
Dobbin says she visited multiple specialists, who all concluded that she was suffering from ME before an official diagnosis.
"Even things like sitting up for a prolonged period of time can take it out of me so I prefer to be just propped up in bed," she explained. "And that doesn't mean I feel fine. It doesn't get rid of my symptoms, but it makes them less hellish."
"It's life-decimating like I can't even put it into words. I feel like I've lost everything," she states.
She describes her future as 'very bleak' due to the lack of medication available to treat ME, adding: "The only positive thing really to say is that COVID happened six years ago now and it's like the whole medical community has woken up. There will be something, I hope, in the future.
"I've got a slight platform. If this happened to most people, they wouldn't be able to speak about it, so I do feel like I've got a bit of a duty to do that."
What is myalgic encephalomyelitis?
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly referred to as ME, is categorised as a long-term condition that can affect multiple parts of the body.
There is not yet exact data on the prevalence of the condition, but new research in 2025 concluded that over 400,000 people in the UK were suffering from ME, and an additional 950,000 people could meet the criteria via a trigger from a COVID-19 infection.
Symptoms of the condition include extreme tiredness and fatigue, sleep problems, problems with thinking, concentration and memory, and post-exertional malaise (PEM), where symptoms can worsen even after minimal physical or social activity.
It is also labelled as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) by the official NHS website, though Dobbin says she 'wish[es] it was just fatigue' and says it isn't in her top 20 symptoms, describing it as if her body is 'shutting down, it feels like you are a few days from death'.
There is no specific medication for treating ME, with patients instead requiring specific, tailored treatment plans to manage symptoms. The NHS website recommends that patients 'should not take up vigorous unsupervised exercise' at the risk of making existing symptoms worse.
Ryan Smart