Olympics long-distance runner ran marathon with gruesome injury

British long-distance runner Rose Harvey revealed in an Instagram post on Tuesday that she competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's marathon event with a broken leg.

The 31-year-old placed 78th in the race with a time of 2:51.03, but it is astonishing that she was able to finish the event, let alone compete with a broken leg. Harvey was just over 28 minutes behind Netherlands gold medalist Sifan Hassan, who posted an Olympic record time of 2:22:55.

Another surprising piece of Harvey's story is that she only seriously took up running in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to her athlete page on the Olympics website, Harvey joined a running club to "meet people after moving to London" at 21 years old, but "running had been no more than a hobby" until 2020. Her profile says it became more than that "after she was made redundant from her job as a lawyer in the music industry" when she was 27.

Harvey's will to fight through this summer's marathon in Paris wasn't the first time she battled an injury in a race either.

While training for the 2022 London Marathon, she was "hit by a car pulling out of a driveway" and "landed on the bonnet and suffered a badly swollen knee." Despite the scare, she kept running every day and posted a time of 2:27:59 in the race.

She qualified for the Summer Games after completing the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2:23:21.