The first time Fiona O'Keefe thought she might one day be an Olympian, it was when her local high school track coach spoke to the class at a middle school assembly. “He said, 'We have future Olympians in this room,' and for some reason I thought maybe that could be me,” she says, laughing. “I'm sure the other five students in the room were probably thinking the same thing, and I think that's when the seed was planted in me.”
A little over a decade later, on Feb. 3, that seed blossomed when O'Keefe courageously took the lead and won the 26.2-mile race at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials marathon in Orlando, Fla. In her debut at the distance, she secured a spot in this summer's 2024 Paris Olympics, an astonishing accomplishment.
O'Keefe's talents began as early as middle school, the time of that electrifying rally. “I wasn't training seriously at that age, but I was always having fun and I was always competitive,” she says, “but I took the races seriously.”
She grew up in Davis, California, a suburb of Sacramento, and was a state champion in high school and won the U.S. 20-and-under championship in the 5,000 meters in 2016. She was an All-American at Stanford and was the Pac-12 cross country champion for the Cardinal in 2019. Since turning professional and joining the Puma Elite Running Team in Raleigh, North Carolina, O'Keefe has thrived with more intense training.
Although she entered the Olympic Trials with a half-marathon record and was in uncharted territory in Orlando, she was by no means a dark horse: Her performances on the track and on the road over the past few years have established her as one of the top distance runners in the country.
“I guess I have a feeling that the longer the distance, the better I'm feeling,” the 26-year-old O'Keefe says of the confidence he felt as he began to pick up the pace at the 15-mile mark of the trials race. “I've always been very competitive, so I'm prepared to throw myself into any situation,” he adds with a laugh, “even when it doesn't pay off.”
At the 19-mile mark, O'Keefe broke away from the pack. American record holder Emily Sisson was close behind her, but in the final miles, O'Keefe's victory seemed almost certain. She finished in 2 hours, 22 minutes, 10 seconds, breaking the Olympic Trials record by nearly three and a half minutes. Sisson (2:22:42) and Dakota Lindworm (2:25:31) finished second and third and will join her in Paris.
“I was just trying to go with my own strength and I was feeling pretty good at that point,” O'Keeffe says of her unexpected surge, which began much earlier than coaches Alistair and Amy Cragg had advised. “The pace dropped off and nobody seemed to notice, so initially I got out front and thought, OK, I'll take the lead and someone else will take over, but in the end it was just me there. So once I realised I was in the lead I wanted to start pushing to make an honest run.”
