Molly Seidel’s stunning bronze medal performance in the women’s Olympic marathon wasn’t just astonishing to the thousands of Americans cheering from home.
Deena Kastor—the American record holder in the marathon and bronze medalist in the event in Athens in 2004—told Runner’s World she didn’t have any members of Team USA among her prerace podium picks. And when Seidel showed up on the starting line with KT Tape on her knee, Kastor was a bit concerned.
Seidel’s parents, Anne and Fritz, have always believed in her. But when an NBC staffer called two hours before their watch party at home in Nashotah, Wisconsin, telling them to prepare to patch in to the broadcast in case Seidel won gold, they wondered if the network was getting a little ahead of itself. The day before the race, Anne texted her daughter well wishes and a Catholic novena—it was a prayer to St. Jude, saint of the impossible.
And as the scream she let loose when she crossed the finish line indicated, Seidel herself wasn’t necessarily expecting a podium spot. “I was very, very surprised,” she told Runner’s World from Tokyo. “I think I only wanted to give myself the hope to like, okay, aim for top 10, maybe top five on a really good day.”
Those who know her running best, however, had an inkling. Her coach Jon Green encouraged her to pack the white Team USA medal uniform when she left her hotel room, just in case. And Matt Sparks, who coached Seidel during her collegiate career at Notre Dame and still keeps in close touch, knew early on she had the potential for greatness. “I think the biggest surprise is that she did it this quickly,” he said.
Here, four reasons why so many others were shocked—and six reasons why, in retrospect, they shouldn’t have been.
She lacks experience at the marathon
If you watched or read anything about Seidel’s race afterward, you probably heard the Olympic race was only her third marathon. The 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials, where she qualified, was her debut at the distance.
The event typically takes some time to master, said Kastor, who’d run four marathons by the time she went to Athens. Competing over such a long distance requires a precise calibration of effort, along with skill at techniques like running tangents to minimize any excess distance. Plus, successfully withstanding nearly two and a half hours of pounding gives you confidence to persist through rough patches in future races, Kastor said.
The field was stacked
Seidel improved on her 2:27:31 performance at the Trials in the London Marathon last October, where she ran 2:25:13. But eight women on the starting line had personal bests faster than 2:20. That included world record holder Brigid Kosgei, who ran 2:14:04 at the 2019 Chicago Marathon. (Kosgei ended up winning silver in Sapporo, in 2:27:36.) Two-time world half marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya won the race in 2:27:20
Her impressive Trials run came in opposite conditions
The Trials were held on a brisk February day in Atlanta, with wind gusts of up to 20 miles per hour. Roaring crowds packed the looped course, which tested the runners with 1,389 feet of uphill and 1,382 feet of downhill.
Saturday morning in Sapporo couldn’t have been more different. Amid COVID-19 concerns, spectators were discouraged. The temperature was 78 degrees, with 83 percent humidity. And aside from a slight swell between the 5K and 10K mark, the course was relatively flat.
Few American women have reached the marathon podium
The first time women competed in the marathon distance at the Olympics was in 1984. Joan Benoit Samuelson won gold in Los Angeles, then Kastor won her bronze in 2004. Until now, no other American woman has earned a marathon medal.
All this factored into Seidel’s tempered expectations. But for her birthday, her sister gave her a bracelet knitted with “USA”; she’d put it on and vowed not to take it off until she won a medal. “So I think there was maybe like a little glint in the back of my mind, okay, maybe we can do this,” she said. “I’m going to cut it off today.”
Zooming out, there was ample evidence to back up that inner glimmer.
Tough conditions leveled the field
Despite the relocation of the marathon from Tokyo to Sapporo and the decision, the night before, to start it an hour earlier, conditions were still hot and humid. Even the fastest runners have to slow down in the heat, making the race less about speed and more about strategy and survival.
“You know it’s not going to go to form when the conditions are wild,” said Des Linden, who famously won the 2018 Boston Marathon in a torrential downpour. “You kind of tear up the expected results and go, ‘Who is going to be the toughest?’ Well, of course Molly is going to be in the mix. She’s super tough.”
Growing up in Wisconsin and going to college in South Bend, Indiana, offered Seidel early experience with sticky, steamy summers. She also did significant heat and humidity training during this cycle, frequently running with her Olympic marathon teammate Aliphine Tuliamuk on 95- to 100-degree days.
“Truthfully, I wanted it as hard as possible. I wanted it hot and windy knowing a lot of these women run really fast in conditions that are very good,” Seidel said in her postrace interviews. “I think I thrive off a little bit of adversity. The course in Atlanta (at the U.S. trials) was a tough, hilly course. When the going gets tough, that’s my strong suit.”
Flagstaff—typically dry—had a more humid summer than most, she said. Sometimes the two would head about an hour south to Camp Verde, where it can be damper. Seidel also ripped a page from Kastor’s training log for Athens: “I would train in heavy cotton T-shirts or cotton sweatshirts, just because it makes you sweat,” Seidel said. “We always joke that cotton is the original performance fabric.”
Seidel has surprised more than once before
While Seidel’s talent was evident since her early days at University Lake School in Hartland, Wisconsin, she still often flew under the radar. “I think everybody underestimates her,” Anne said, adding that Seidel doesn’t mind staying low-key. Some were shocked when she won the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships, a national high school competition, in 2011.
And despite that accomplishment—or in part because of it, as there was long perceived to be a curse surrounding the event—her victory in the 10,000 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships also came as a shock to many, Seidel herself included. “Nobody really knew about her and she ended up winning that one,” Fritz said.
Follow that, of course, with the Trials. Seidel qualified by running a 1:10:26 win at the Rock ’n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon in December 2019, then surprised her parents with plane tickets and an Airbnb in Atlanta. There was a mishap with their finish-line credentials, and they watched her unexpected second-place finish from an Irish pub.
“It was shocking that in her marathon debut, she came out and made her first Olympic team,” Kastor said. “And so why are we shocked that, in her first performance on the world stage, she would deliver another great performance?” By 5K, when Seidel and her teammate Sally Kipyego looked strong in the lead pack and Tuliamuk wasn’t far behind, Kastor was rethinking her picks. In the end, she called Seidel’s run “brilliant.”
She seems made for the marathon
Though she could clearly run well at distances like the 10,000 meters, Sparks and Seidel realized by the last year of her NCAA career that she didn’t do well with the shorter, faster intervals typical of college runners. Instead, she thrived on long runs and tempo runs, training that’s more typical of a marathoner.
Sparks said he and Seidel were already discussing the distance near the end of her collegiate career. Though her training wasn’t quite as intense then as it is now, she frequently doubled, did long runs of up to 15 miles, and hit weekly mileage of 80 to 100.
“People say she’s only been training for the marathon for a year and a half, two years, but she’s had that mindset and a bit of a training background well before that,” he said.
And then there’s the psychological side of the daunting distance. Seidel has openly discussed her history of obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, and described the way running helps calm her symptoms. In a way, that gives her an advantage when the going gets tough, Sparks said.
“My brain in my normal functioning life can go haywire, a mile a minute,” Seidel said. But over long distances, she locks in and enters a flow state. “I think that’s why I love the marathon; you go to this place mentally that you don’t go with other, shorter types of races. You just find that line and you ride it as long as you can.”
That quiet mind helped her in the final miles, which she said were undoubtedly the toughest—with five to go, she began reciting the novena her mom sent her. At mile 23, Israel’s Lonah Chemtai Salpeter, who’d pulled ahead of Seidel into third, began walking. (Salpeter later posted on Facebook that she was on her period and had severe cramps.)
At that point, Seidel simply had to keep going to win a medal. “It was this thought of, just keep pushing, keep pushing, and just focusing on Brigid’s back right in front of me,” she said. “I think if I thought too deeply about it, I would be like, ‘Yeah, just try to hang on to the woman who’s run a 2:14 marathon.’ I think that’s why it helps sometimes not thinking too much in depth about what you’re actually doing.”
Linden compares Seidel’s trajectory to that of Galen Rupp, 35. He also showed significant promise as a high schooler—then won bronze in Rio in his second marathon, after winning the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials in his debut, at age 29.
In both cases, the right combination of runner and distance led to swift success. “I think she found her event right away, versus kind of searching around for it and getting stuck in a distance that wasn’t necessarily right for her,” Linden said.
The extra year gave her even more time to get ready for it
For athletes in the latter stages of their careers, the postponement of the Games posed nothing but challenges. Though the uncertainty was stressful for Seidel, it also provided her the chance to toe the line far more prepared for this event. “Everything we have done over the past year and a half has been geared toward preparing as well as possible for the Olympic marathon,” she said.
That included skipping the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials—for a while, she’d considered running the 10,000 meters. In addition, she used the marathon she ran in London as a chance to practice her nutrition and other strategies, rather than an all-out effort.
While her training as a whole went well, she recalls one key workout about four weeks ago that boosted her confidence: a 12-mile run on Lake Mary Road, a hilly route popular among pro runners, where she alternated between floating a mile and pushing a mile. She ran it faster than she ever had and realized she just might be ready for something big.
“I was able to build myself into the person that could do that,” she said of reaching the podium. “A year ago, I just straight up couldn’t—I would have just been happy to be here, and happy to just go out and run the Olympic marathon. When I came in this year, I was like, okay, I’m ready to be a competitor in this.”
She went through treatment for an eating disorder, and came back far stronger
A large proportion of high-level young distance runners develop disordered eating habits or diagnosed disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia. In one recent study, 46 percent of women running NCAA Division I cross country and track screened positive for the risk of such issues.
Seidel has been open about her own history with bulimia, and how it contributed to injuries and health problems, including osteopenia, or low bone density. She qualified for the U.S. Olympic Track Trials in 2016 but was sidelined with a stress fracture. Instead of running, she checked herself into treatment.
“Recovery is the reason why I am here today,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to continue in this sport if I hadn’t gone through treatment.”
Now, she wants others who are currently struggling to know there is hope on the other side of the hard work and challenge. Kara Bazzi, L.M.F.T., cofounder and clinical director of Opal Food & Body Wisdom in Seattle, agrees. Although Seidel went to a different facility, Bazzi was a collegiate runner herself and often treats elite athletes.
“I get to watch people transform all the time, and it’s just really cool,” Bazzi said. “While some people choose to take a break from the sport, some people go back full force.” And when they do, they’re far stronger, more resilient, and empowered, she said.
She’s set up a structure that works for her
After several years with Saucony, Seidel signed a new contract with Puma in January. The financial boost it provided allowed her to move from Boston to Flagstaff, where she bought a house.
Green, who lives in New York, has coached her since 2019. He’s also newer to the role—he’s only 26 and had little coaching experience before Seidel, though he’s now the head coach of Mary Cain’s new training group, Atalanta. But the two are best friends and work together as partners, with Green assigning workouts and Seidel fine-tuning her mileage and schedule (and Sparks also consulting as needed).
“Jon gives me a lot of autonomy, and he has no ego. He’s always willing to listen and learn,” she said. “I think that’s why we’ve been able to grow together into a team that’s been able to do this. I look at this medal as for the both of us rather than just me.”
It all adds up to a happy, balanced existence, with friends outside the sport as well as the foundation she needs within it. “The biggest thing is finding a situation where you’re happy and mentally healthy, and you have people that support you and the goals you’ve got,” she said.
What Seidel’s Medal Means for the Future
Now, Seidel has cemented her status as one of America’s top marathoners and improved Team USA’s standing on the world stage. She’ll keep her focus on the distance, targeting a fall race. She can’t yet say which one—but regardless, if conditions are more favorable, Linden, Kastor, and Sparks all believe she’s capable of running much faster.
In fact, Kastor believes her 2:19:36 American record, set in London in 2006, is likely to fall in the next year—and that either Sara Hall or Seidel, with her efficient stride, could be the one to claim it.
That’s just the near term, though. Seidel’s impact will last far longer, Kastor said. Samuelson’s run in Los Angeles inspired an 11-year-old Kastor to start running. In fourth grade, Seidel wrote in a class assignment that she wished to win a gold medal—that was 2004, after she’d watched Kastor in Athens.
“Immediately after the race, Joan sent me a text saying, ‘We got another one in the group,’” Kastor said. The accomplishment represents not only a goal achieved for Seidel, but also doors opened to other little girls—the Joans, Deenas, and Mollys of tomorrow.
—Additional reporting by Sarah Lorge Butler
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