British marathoner feels ‘thrown under the bus’ by UK Athletics

British elite runner Charlotte Purdue is reportedly seeking legal advice after being left off the U.K. Olympic marathon team for Tokyo 2021. The 29-year-old’s personal best of 2:25:38, which she ran at the London Marathon in 2019, is the fourth-fastest marathon time by a woman in British history and makes her the second-fastest marathoner in the country currently. Despite this, UK Athletics (UKA) did not select her for the team, which she says was because of false information cited at the selection meeting.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNaXplolQt0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

RELATED: 39-year-old new father wins U.K. Olympic Marathon Trials

In an interview with Athletics Illustrated, Purdue explained that, in the U.K., the first two athletes across the line at the Olympic qualifying race gain an automatic spot on the Olympic team, as long as they run under the qualifying standard of 2:29:30. The third spot is discretionary and is left to UKA to decide. This year, Stephanie Davis was the only woman to run under the standard at the trials, crossing the line in Kew Gardens in 2:27:16, which left the other two spots for the selection committee to decide. There were three athletes who were given permission to sit out the trials by the UKA with medical exemptions, including Purdue.

Jess Piasecki, the only other woman in the U.K. who currently owns a faster PB than Purdue, was named to the team alongside Davis, but the other athlete chosen to represent the country in Tokyo was Steph Twell, whose personal best is more than a minute slower than Purdue’s. Neither Piasecki nor Twell competed at the trials due to medical exemptions.

Purdue explained in the interview that she had picked up a stress-response injury in her femur in January, and the UKA medical team advised her to take six weeks off to rehab the injury. She was hesitant to take that much time off, but they assured her that if she did that she would be given a spot on the Olympic team, as long as no one ran faster than her at the trials.

“I basically did everything they said,” she told the interviewer. “I took six weeks off, I rehabbed back exactly the way they wanted me to … so I felt like it was very unfair.”

She told the BBC that she actually took more time off than she normally would because the UKA led her to believe that with the medical exemption she would still be selected to the team, and feels “completely thrown under the bus.” According to Purdue, minutes from the meeting (which she was given through a subsequent, unsuccessful appeal of the decision) incorrectly stated that she was “only running for 30 minutes” and that she was “eight weeks away from full training.”

“Last week I ran 83 miles and at the time of the meeting I was running 75 minutes doing 6x1K sessions,” she told the BBC. “My coach provided that in an email to the selection meeting, so it just makes me really angry that the information wasn’t relayed correctly and this ultimately left me not being selected for the Olympics.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNhdzvjlrZN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

According to The Times UK, Purdue is now seeking legal advice, and she is waiting for written reasons as to why she was rejected. She says her femur was scanned and declared to be fully healed, and she is almost back to a full training volume.

“It feels like I am fighting a losing battle based on the fact I feel like my appeal was never going to be successful from the moment I was writing it,” she told the BBC. “It just feels really demoralizing to be fighting against something that, either way I look at it, I just feel I am going to lose.”

The Tokyo Olympics are set to begin in just over three months, from July 23 to August 8, but unfortunately for Purdue, it doesn’t look like anything will be changing.

RELATED: Canadian athletes struggle to qualify for Tokyo 2021