Beth Dobbin has only left her house on five occasions during 2026. In the summer of 2021, she had lined up in the Olympic 200m semi-final in Tokyo.

The sprinter, now 32, has told the BBC how myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, has taken over her life.

“It’s life-decimating, like I can’t even put into words,” she said.

“I’ve lost my independence, my health, the ability to work, the ability to exercise.”

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The illness arrived in the winter of 2021-22, when Dobbin contracted Covid and glandular fever back-to-back. She kept competing through the following season. She raced at the 2022 World Championships and the European Championships, and took 4x400m relay bronze at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Her body did not recover.

A Scottish record that stood for a generation

In July 2019, Dobbin had run 22.50 seconds for 200m, taking the Scottish record from Sandra Whittaker and lowering a mark that had stood for more than three decades. The record still stands in her name.

She retired in April 2026, aged 31, in a farewell message released through Scottish Athletics that cited “a three-year battle with a serious and life-changing health issue.” She did not name the condition at the time.

“On one hand it feels like my career has been cut short and it feels cruel not to be retiring on my own terms,” she said in the farewell statement.

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She also drew a distinction between dealing with injury and dealing with chronic illness. With injury, she said, you are surrounded by physio expertise; with her illness, it had been a long search for answers and trial-and-error treatment.

A condition that leaves one in four housebound or bedbound

ME is a chronic, fluctuating illness marked by severe post-exertional fatigue, pain, disrupted sleep and cognitive problems. There is no cure.

Action for ME estimates around 404,000 people in the UK live with ME or ME/CFS, and that “one in four people with ME are so severely affected that they are house or bedbound.” Dobbin is now in that quarter.

Even the smallest errands carry a cost. Dobbin told the BBC she had attended a routine blood test knowing the setback could stretch into 2027. A conversation that runs on too long, a light that is too bright or a sound that is too loud can be enough to trigger a crash lasting days, weeks or, in the worst cases, months.

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Her parents Jim and Jean, and her sister Faye, also spoke to the BBC about the helplessness of watching her from the outside. Faye is running the Yorkshire Marathon to raise money for ME Research UK.

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