Team GB athlete Rose Harvey has revealed she crossed the marathon finish line with a broken leg at the Olympics. The 31-year-old had been in a race against time to be fit for the event in Paris and was told by doctors that she would make her injury worse by taking part.
Harvey says that her hip had begun feeling tight three weeks before she travelled to France. But she accepted the risk having enjoyed the best form of her career.
The Worcestershire-born star was selected for the Olympics after running 2:23:21 in Chicago last year. She was also the fastest British woman at the 2022 London Marathon, which took place in the same year she turned professional.
Harvey was unwilling to accept that her Olympics was over before it had started, and defied medical advice to run the marathon in Paris. She insists she felt good on the start line but found herself flagging after six miles.
She learned that she had crossed the finish line with a fractured femur. Remarkably, she still finished in under three hours, clocking in at 2:51:03 in 24-degree heat.
“It was really tough,” Harvey told the BBC.
“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.”
Harvey, who is getting married in three weeks and is currently on crutches, admits that she might have pulled out of any other race but felt she was unable to do so on an occasion as big as the Olympics.
“The Olympic energy was kind of what kept me going to that finish line,” she continued.
“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.
“I think the other big thing is I knew deep down if I stopped I would always wonder ‘what if I could’ve just run an extra mile?’ And I wouldn’t be able to live with that.”