The Big Lead

Can You Finish a Marathon With a Broken Leg? An Olympic Runner Did.

Rose Harvey of Great Britain finished 78th with a stress fracture in her femur.

By Evan Bleier

Runners make their way past the Louvre Museum in the women's marathon during the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games.
Runners make their way past the Louvre Museum in the women's marathon during the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games. / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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Struck by a car while training in the days leading up to the 2022 London Marathon, lawyer-turned-professional-runner Rose Harvey was unsure if she was going to be able to give it a go. But Harvey did, despite giving herself less than a 50 percent chance of finishing.

It was difficult. Harvey's knee was hurting her from the jump, but the 31-year-old was able to finish the marathon and amazingly came in as the fastest British woman with a time of 2:27:58, according to Runner's World.

Harvey didn't have quite the same luck when she was injured while making her marathon debut at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, but the 31-year-old still showed a lot of heart and guts while completing the grueling run.

Battling a sore hip prior to the race, Harvey elected to gut it out for Team Great Britain and ended up finishing 78th with a time of 2:51:03, beating out just two other runners who finished the race. (Eleven runners didn't finish.)

As Harvey revealed in an Instagram post, she had a very good reason for not competing with marathon winner Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands (an Olympic record time of 2:22:55) for the gold.

It turns out a striking pain that Harvey began feeling in her leg just two miles into the race was a stress fracture in her femur, an injury that turned the final 24 miles of the marathon into a "painful battle."

"In any other race, I would have stopped and there were so many moments when I thought I couldn’t take another step. The downhills were hell," she wrote. "But despite that most of my race goals having slipped away, there was still a tiny part of my Olympic dream that I could hang onto — and that was finishing the Olympic marathon. I couldn’t give up."

Harvey, who was working full-time before lockdown in 2020 and only got serious about running after she was laid off, didn't give up and now is on crutches and unable to put any weight on her leg. That's somewhat of a issue as she's set to marry her fiancé Charlie Thuillier in three weeks.

"Every mile, I just thought 'right, just run to Charlie, run to when I can see him next,' " she told the BBC. "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.”

Maybe, but it will probably be Harvey — and she'll certainly finish the walk.