Rewind a year and there’s a chance that you wouldn’t have heard of Calli Hauger-Thackery. But, in October 2023, the 31-year-old Brit from Sheffield announced herself in spectacular style. On her marathon debut at the low-key McKirdy Micro Marathon in New York, Hauger-Thackery crossed the line in a rapid 2:22:17 – drawing her level with Charlotte Purdue and staying injury-free.
With her marathon PB falling well within the Olympic qualifying standard of 2:26:50, Hauger-Thackery then had the chance to live out her dream and represent Team GB in the women’s Olympic marathon Rose Harvey: Lawyer turned Olympic marathon runner.
We caught up with the talented runner ahead of debut Olympics to discover how she rose to such a high level in her sport.
A family affair
While it might seem like a whirlwind journey, Hauger-Thackery’s rise to the Olympics has been a long time in the making. Born in Yorkshire to mother Rachel, a county level sprinter, and father Carl, a professional long distance runner in the 1980s and 1990s, Hauger-Thackery’s obsession with running is very much runs in the genes, and her parents’ achievements have been an obvious inspiration in transforming her childhood hobby into a fully-fledged career.
She fondly remembers a school sports day at the age of 12 as her first significant running memory. ‘The teacher said, “Off your marks, go!” and we ran around the whole school premises,’ she recalls. ‘I think, even from then, I just paced myself and I won the whole thing. My teacher said, “You’re really good at this running thing – you should join a club”, so I went home to my mum who said that she’d been waiting for this day for a while.’
Even though her parents were aware of her potential from a young age, Hauger-Thackery said that she never felt any pressure to pursue a career in professional running. But, she has also said that their unrelenting support has been a key a factor in helping her to get to where she is today.
Catching the running bug
After that pinnacle school sports day, Hauger-Thackery’s parents signed her up to their local Sheffield club, the Hallamshire Harriers, where she fell in love with athletics.
She then competed in a series of races through high school and, by her mid-teens, was attracting scholarships offers from a number of American colleges.
Her dream was always to train in America, and she eventually took up the offer of a place at the University of New Mexico, where she spent four years. ‘It was an amazing experience. The university was in Albuquerque, which is an altitude spot in the mountains and desert. We had a few Brits on the team like Josh Kerr and Courtney Cartwright, so I was in good company,’ she explained.
On finishing university, and with her running going from strength to strength, Hauger-Thackery then spent three years in Australia, where she trained at the Melbourne Track Club. When she returned to the UK, she was selected to compete in the women’s 5000m at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. She finished tenth overall, before taking sixth just a few weeks later at the the European Athletics Championships in Munich.
The following year, in October 2023, Hauger-Thackery’s distance-running potential shone through at the World Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia, where she posted an impressive time of 68:56 in the half marathon. The achievement was especially emotional for the then-30-year-old, as her father had won bronze at the World Half Marathon Championships in Brussels 30 years ago to the day, and she had been determined to follow in his footsteps.
With no intention of taking her foot off the gas, that same month Hauger-Thackery made her marathon debut in New York, where she hit the Olympic qualifying mark in phenomenal fashion. She says that she chose to race the relatively unknown McKirdy Micro Marathon over any of the big womens Olympic marathon because she wanted to get used to the distance – and she was shocked by her own performance.
‘At that point, I was still very much a track runner, but I thought, you know what, this is the year I’m going to try the marathon and see how it goes,’ she said. ‘I guess all the stars aligned on the day and everything just went right in terms of fuelling and pacing myself. I was honestly shocked. I knew I was on for a fast time, but I didn’t really know what that would be, so when I saw 2:22 I was so happy.’
Tough times
It hasn’t always been plain sailing for Hauger-Thackery, as 2023 also came with its fair share of struggles. Let down time and time again by agents with promises that never materialised, Hauger-Thackery was desperate to secure sponsorship so that she could scale up her training.
‘Last year was a really tough year because I fully quit my job to go full-on into running,’ she said. ‘I've worked my whole whole life up until last year. I was trying to juggle both running and work, and as a runner without sponsorship, it’s really tough. Plus, things didn’t work out with several coaches, so I didn’t have a great support system – but despite the setbacks, I fully backed myself on my running journey.’
Her leap of faith paid off last October when she signed a sponsorship deal with Nike. Her father was also a Nike sponsored athlete, so she was proud to be following his lead. ‘My dad was sponsored by Nike as well, so that was a big part of why I wanted to be with the brand,’ she revealed.
Now coached by her husband Nick Hauger, she has said that she now has a great network of support around her. ‘My husband is just incredible and he does all the thinking for me – I trust him wholeheartedly with the training.’
A brighter future
Just two months before she pulled on the Team GB vest in Paris at her first-ever Olympics – where she shared the streets with some of the world’s greatest athletes – Hauger-Thackery said that she felt in great spot, both physically and mentally. In the build up to the race in August 2024, her training saw her bank around 220 miles per week, with a focus on speed and hill work Phil Sesemann and his rise to the Olympic marathon.
‘The only overriding feeling I have right now is excitement,’ she noted before the Games. ‘Training is going really well – I’ve been racing a little bit here and there, and it’s all definitely going in the right direction.’
And while, alongside 10 other athletes, she was sadly unable to complete the hilly Olympic course on that hot Parisian morning, we can be sure that Hauger-Thackery has plenty more outstanding marathon performances left to give.
