Great Britain’s Rose Harvey finished 78th in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics, out of 91 competitors and 80 finishers.
For some, that might have been disappointing outcome. In Harvey’s case, it was one of the most remarkable performances of the Olympics.
That is because Harvey was revealed after the race to have crossed the finish line with a stress fracture in her femur, according to the BBC. She had entered the day with a hip injury, which wasn’t helped by perhaps the most punishing course ever devised for a major marathon.
With the series of climbs and downhills in Paris, it’s a wonder Harvey finished at all, to say nothing of doing it in less than three hours, with a time of 2:51:03. From the BBC:
It was really tough. It was a really, really hard day. I knew from about two miles in that my hip was going to be really, pretty painful. The hills didnt help at all, the downhills were just agony and it just got worse and worse. At the halfway mark, I knew that it was going to be incredibly painful.
“Honestly, today I’m not sure how I did it because I can’t put any weight on my leg at all.”
Harvey reportedly received treatment on the hip before the Olympics, but was advised that running the marathon would make it worse. There were no reserves from Great Britain to take her place in the race, so she decided to give it a shot.
She credited her friends, family and own anxiety about finishing for keeping her going:
“Having so many friends and family out there, it just means so much, to have that support. My fiancé Charlie was there and seeing him in so many parts just kept me going. Every mile, I just thought ‘Right, just run to Charlie, run to when I can see him next, when I can see my friends and family next.’ The crowds were incredible and I think the other big thing is I knew deep down if I stopped, I would always wonder ‘What if just could have run an extra mile? I wouldn’t have been able to live with that.
“Any other race I would have stopped, because I wasn’t able to run like I normally can… and the pain was really bad, but I just had to get to that finish line, I had to do the Olympic marathon.”
Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands won the gold medal in the marathon, with an Olympic-record time of 2:22:55. Harvey is now walking around on crutches, which might be an issue with her wedding coming up in three weeks:
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.
Even a healthy Harvey would have been an unusual presence in the marathon field, as the 31-year-old didn’t start running in elite competition until four years ago. Before that, she was working as a corporate lawyer while enjoying running as a hobby.
After being laid off in 2020, Harvey started training for a triathlon and just kept going, eventually notching a personal-best time in the Chicago Marathon that qualified her for Paris.