Three GB marathon runners selected for Paris 2024 with fascinating back stories
The six marathon runners selected for Team GB's squad for Paris 2024, starting 26 July, are all debutants, and each have quite the story to tell.
Charlotte Purdue is a former ballet dancer turned runner who secured the Olympic standard time with two hours 22 minutes and 17 seconds at the 2023 Berlin Marathon to take her joint second on the British all-time list behind former women's marathon record holder, Paula Radcliffe.
Calli Hauger-Thackery is the other half of that record-equalling British time in the women's marathon, securing the mark in her debut in October 2023, to also claim an Olympic spot in Paris. Only athletics icons Sifan Hassan (Netherlands) and Radcliffe achieved faster times by a European woman on their debut.
Emile Cairess matches the feat of the second-fastest British marathoner of all time, this time in the men's edition, behind the two-time double Olympic champion in the 5,000m and 10,000m, Mo Farah. At his marathon debut in London in 2023, Cairess overtook Farah, finishing sixth. A year later, Cairess finished in 2:06:46 to qualify for Paris.
This trio of athletes have quite the back stories themselves, but it is to their three teammates we turn our attention, starting with former lawyer, Rose Harvey.
Olympic Games Paris 2024 with the Eiffel Tower at its heart
Rose Harvey – former corporate lawyer turned marathon runner
When Rose Harvey was made redundant from her corporate lawyer job during the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided a lockdown project was needed and the "lofty goal of making the Surrey County running team", was born.
'Sadly', that dream was never realised.
Instead, Harvey was invited to join the England half marathon team after running a 2:30:59 in her first race post lockdown, and in 2021 joined the elite field at the London Marathon.
The following year, and now a professional runner, Harvey, who had previously pounded the London pavements to her office and back, secured a 10th-place finish on those same streets to qualify for the 2022 World Championships in Oregon.
The 2023 Chicago Marathon was the setting for Harvey clocking 2:23:21 to better the Olympic qualifying time for Paris 2024 for women of 2:26.50 and by April 2024 Harvey's four-year journey from club runner to Olympic Games was complete.
Mahamed Mahamed – secured Paris 2024 Olympic marathon time despite fasting during training
A beaming Mahamed Mahamed couldn't contain his delight at the 2024 London Marathon after securing fourth place to Cairess' third, in a time that earned him a qualifying time for the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
In just his second marathon, the Ethiopian-born athlete who moved to the UK with his parents in 2011 when he was 14 – just in time to be inspired by athletes like Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis-Hill at London 2012 – clocked a time of 2:07:05 to better the qualifying mark of 2:08.10, which he'd been unable to secure in his debut marathon in Valencia in December 2023.
Describing himself as "over the moon", Mahamed revealed that preparations had been impacted by fasting for Ramadan, telling the Team GB website: “I cannot complain about Ramadan, but it came in the preparation of my main marathon goal. It was really hard for me.
“I had to sleep during the day-time, up to midday, my nutrition changed, my sleeping, my training. If I was doing double sessions, I had to wait until sunset before I could eat and then I would train at midnight.
“I wasn’t expecting to do as well as I did on Sunday. I did well, getting a PB and the Olympic time is amazing,” smiled the soon-to-be Olympian, whose 12-year dream is close to fruition.
Philip Sesemann – from long junior doctor shifts to marathon Olympic dream
When a runner goes on long training runs with his two dogs named Kipchoge and Haile, you know this is someone serious about their craft.
Philip Sesemann is that man, and in February of 2024, the junior doctor who named his pooches after two of the greatest long-distance runners who've ever lived, Eliud Kipchoge, and Haile Gebrselassie, ran an Olympic standard time of 2:08.00 to qualify for Paris 2024.
The achievement is all the more impressive considering Sesemann has combined an 80-mile running week with shifts in accident and emergency at a hospital in Leeds in northern England.
He'll need to book some time off in August though, in order to make his Olympic debut on the streets of France's capital.
The men's marathon takes place on the penultimate day of the Games, on 10 August, while the women's edition on Sunday 11 August will pay tribute to a key moment in French history and the French Revolution, the Women's March on Versailles on 5 October 1789.