Seidel, third at Tokyo, to miss US Olympic trials with knee injury

Molly Seidel, third in the women’s marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, said Thursday she will not race in Saturday’s US Olympic Marathon Trials due to a knee injury.

In a video posted on Instagram, Seidel said she was “bummed” about the situation, saying, “I’ve dreamed about making this team and defending my bronze medal at the Paris Olympics since the last Olympics.”

Runners will race for US berths at the Paris Games on Saturday in Orlando.

Seidel, 29, was eighth in last year’s Chicago Marathon and fourth in the 2021 New York Marathon after taking the first US medal in the Olympic women’s marathon since 2004.

“I will not be lining up for the Olympic trials marathon this coming Saturday,” she said in the video.

“About a month ago, my knee took this huge turn for the worse. I couldn’t run on it at all and I got an MRI that showed I had broken my patella (kneecap) and partially torn my patellar tendon.”

Seidel said she saw physiotherapists and doctors and cross-trained for weeks, noting, “I’ve done everything in my power over this last month to try to get myself to the line.

“But ultimately it got to this week and my knee had not healed up enough and I knew I could not race a marathon hard on it in its’ current shape without really injuring myself.”

Seidel was a runner-up four years ago in her debut at the 26.2-mile distance to qualify for the Olympics.

She took two years off after Tokyo, some of it to cope with a hip injury, before running a personal best at Chicago.

Seidel became the second contender to pull out of the competition, with Emma Bates — the third-fastest US women’s marathoner in 2023, dropping out last month, saying there was not enough time for her “to be where I need to be.”