Olympic Marathoner Finishes Despite Painful Fracture During Race

An Olympic marathon runner with Team Great Britain managed to not only finish Sunday's race, but did so in under three hours despite suffering a stress fracture during the race that left her in "agony."

Rose Harvey, 31, from Evesham, Worcestershire managed to finish 78th in a time of 2:51:03 on the final day of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, even though she knew that she was injured heading into the race. Now, in an interview with the BBC , Harvey explained that her hip had been feeling tight in the three weeks leading up to the race, and did not seem to be improving even with medical treatment.

But with no reserves on her team to take her place, Harvey decided to attempt the marathon anyway, even as her doctors warned her that running could make the injury worse. And although she felt positive at the start line, within two miles she realized that she was in for a painful ordeal.

"It was really tough," Harvey recalled. "The hills didn't help at all, the downhills were just agony and it just got worse and worse. At the halfway mark I knew it was going to be incredibly painful."

But even with a stress fracture of her femur, she managed to cross the finish line—and wasn't even in last place. She managed to beat out Shantoshi Shrestha of Nepal and Bhutan's Kinzang Lhamo, who finished last, while 11 other runners didn't complete the race.

Meanwhile, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands took the gold with an Olympic record time of 2:22:55. Even more heartbreaking, Harvey qualified for the Olympics after running 2:23:21 in the Chicago Marathon in 2023, just 26 seconds slower than Hassan's finishing time and the fifth fastest-ever time for a marathon ran by a British woman.

Harvey attributes the "Olympic energy" for sustaining her momentum, as painful as it may have been. "Any other race I would have stopped, because I wasn't able to run like I normally can," she admitted. "And the pain was really bad, but I just had to get to that finish line, I had to do the Olympic marathon."

Now, she looks forward to getting married in three weeks, despite not being able to put any weight on her leg and having to use crutches. She says the thought of seeing her fiance, Charlie Thuillier, also kept her going to the finish. "Every mile, I just thought 'right, just run to Charlie, run to when I can see him next,'" she said.

"My big challenge is to hopefully be off crutches for the wedding but we will see. It might be Charlie walking down the aisle at this rate," she quipped. But for his part, Thuillier doesn't seem to be concerned. He added: "If Rosie is on crutches, if she’s in a wheelchair, if she’s on a scooter, it doesn’t matter as long as Rosie is there."