The 2024 season is promising to be a carnival for sports enthusiasts with multiple high-octane events lined up through the calendar. While the Youth Olympics have drawn its veneers shut, the forthcoming Summer Olympics in Paris are witnessing an American runner rise to the favorite position if she qualifies for the U. S Olympic Trials. After giving a vent for her embryonic dreams to breathe back in 2011, this year’s trials will mark her first.

While there’s no doubt that the 46-year-old U. S athlete Roberta Groner dreams today of the Olympic gold, there once was a time when a marathon was the last she would think of. It started when her brother died, and so did her passion for the sport. But she didn’t let life knock the wind out of her. She rose back up, akin to a phoenix rising from its ashes.

US athlete Roberta Groner recalls her bittersweet past

American athlete Roberta Groner is among the favorites to qualify for the Paris Olympics 2024. Still, only if life had a different plan, she could have already raced at the Olympics by now. Or maybe not. She was a marathon runner for 4 years at Saint Francis University but believed she only ran for a ‘scholarship‘. “I didn’t love the process of running itself“, Groner expressed. She exclaims in this tête-à-tête that -“ I still had a lot of demons, you know, a lot of struggles.” A concatenation of all her traumatic life events made her take the recourse of marathon running.

After completing university, and when she didn’t find any interest in running, things took an even sharper turn when her brother died. “I had a brother that died suddenly”, she adds. “Life took me down a different path. I left college, and when I left I went to like a smaller college for nursing and they didn’t have a running probably and I just kind of Let It go“. Groner later got married and had 3 kids before her drive for running was eventually reborn.

Roberta Groner proves the adage – age is just a number

After giving birth to three kids, Groner found spare time despite working in her nursing program. The 46-year-old had then started taking 30-minute runs, and suddenly it became a routine. Or she says, “It was almost like this Escape or outlet for me“. And when her colleague proposed to train for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon, she replied, ‘Why not? “ Thus started the sojourn of Groner, who now dreams to qualify for the Olympics.

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The 2010 Pittsburgh Half Marathon saw Groner complete the race in 1:34:23 with a speed of 7:12m/mile. She then joined a club and prepared for the Chicago Marathon 2011 to complete the race in 3:12:42. Slowly and steadily, she rose through the ranks and finished 6th at the 2019 World Athletic Championship in Doha. As she prepares for the Olympics trials, the 46-year-old will have the whole of America cheering behind her.

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