As she approached the final mile in the world championships marathon on Sunday in London, Amy Cragg faced a decision—one all runners face at when they tackle the 26.2-mile distance.
Just ahead of her, she could see Kenya’s Flomena Daniel in third position, and though Cragg, 33, desperately wanted a medal, the pain and fatigue left her tempted to surrender the fight.
“I knew this is the moment I would remember, whether or not I pushed to try get a medal,” she said after the race. “I said to myself, ‘Just be as close as you can and you’ll be able to dig deep enough. Don’t give her an inch.’”
As she entered the final 800 meters, Cragg started to reel in Daniel, and when she caught sight of the finish line on Tower Bridge, she ignored the distress calls in her legs and threw all she had left at her Kenyan rival.
It paid off, Cragg coming home in third to become the first American woman in 34 years to win a medal in the world championships marathon. The race was won by Bahrain’s Rose Chelimo in 2:27:11, with Kenya’s Edna Kiplagat second in 2:27:18.
second in 2:27:18.
“It was really painful, but it was worth every little bit of pain,” she said. “It was just a grind to the finish.”
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On a warm, sunny afternoon in the English capital, it had been a cagey contest for much of the race, with runners sensing that it could come down to a war of attrition over the closing miles.
Twenty miles into the race, there were still 15 athletes in contention at the front, but eventually Cragg lost patience, changing gears and splitting the leading pack.
“I thought it would go at any moment and I was waiting, waiting, waiting,” she said. “I said I’d see what happens if I put in a little move and it got it going.”
Coming into the closing two miles, Kiplagat and Chelimo had moved clear at the front, the pair alternating surges in the race for gold, the same thing Cragg and Daniel were doing farther back in the battle for the bronze medal.
Heading into that final mile, Cragg caught sight of her husband, Alistair, and her Bowerman Track Club coach, Jerry Schumacher, on the side of the road.
“We were yelling, ‘This is it Amy, you gotta be on it, give yourself a chance,’” Schumacher said. “We knew everything that was in there was going to come out.”
For husband, Alistair, a retired two-time Olympian for Ireland, that final mile was more nerve-wracking than anything he experienced as an athlete.
“When the move happened my stomach dropped,” he said. “I realized this is what she’s done her whole life and thought about everything she put into it. I ran down and said, ‘This is it, make it happen.’”
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“I decided to go for it and Jerry was right—with 800 meters to go that was when I knew,” she said.
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Cragg, who lives in Portland, Oregon, has been one of America’s finest marathoners in recent years, having won the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Los Angeles and finishing ninth in the Olympic marathon in Rio last year, but what was missing from her résumé was a major medal.
Despite lucrative offers to run a spring marathon, she bypassed them all to try fill that gap in London. But when she arrived here two weeks ago, her medal hopes faded fast when she picked up an infection.
“Up until yesterday I was still dripping snot, but I could feel it coming around,” she said. “This morning I woke up and felt normal, and it was just in the nick of time.”
In the immediate aftermath, Schumacher admitted he thought a medal was slipping away in those closing miles, even though he knew deep down that Cragg would fight to the death to win one.
“That last mile when she was getting gapped I was like, ‘Aw, man this is going to be a fourth place and that’s going to be tough to swallow,’” he said. “But she’s a tough little cookie. She just wanted it so badly and today’s effort was all heart.”
And when she eventually got her medal, Cragg’s face was a mixture of delight and delirium, the magnitude of her achievement yet to sink in.
“It feels amazing,” she said. “I can’t even believe it.”
Cathal Dennehy is a freelance writer based in Dublin, Ireland, who covers the sport for multiple outlets from Irish newspapers to international track websites. As an athlete, he was Irish junior cross-country champion and twice raced the European Cross Country, but since injury forced his retirement his best athletic feat has been the Irish beer mile record. He’s happiest when he’s running or writing stories about world-class athletes.
