Purdue takes legal advice after Olympic appeal fails
Charlotte Purdue, the fourthfastest British marathon runner in history, is seeking legal advice after her appeal against being left out of the team for the Tokyo Olympics was rejected.
Purdue, the sole British entrant in the women’s marathon at the 2019 World Championships, achieved the Olympic qualifying standard that year when she was the first British finisher at the London Marathon in a personal best of 2hr 25min 38sec.
She was given a medical exemption to miss last month’s official marathon trials at Kew Gardens, London, but was then unexpectedly overlooked in favour of Steph Twell, whose best time of 2:26.40 is more than a minute slower. Trials winner Steph Davis and Jess Piasecki claimed the other two available spots on the team.
Purdue took a six-week break from training this year to recover from a stress injury, but had been training for a number of weeks prior to the team announcement. She remains adamant she will be fully fit long before the Olympic marathon on Aug 7.
Purdue claims the UK Athletics appeals panel was incorrectly told that she was back to training for 35 minutes at a time, when she was already up to hour-long sessions. She says she was told by Christian Malcolm, British Athletics’ Olympic head coach, she was not selected based on medical grounds.
Purdue has not raced since narrowly missing her halfmarathon personal best in February 2020. Tokyo will be Twell’s third Olympics after competing over 1500metres in 2008 and 5,000m in 2016.