Fiona O'Keeffe has hamstring surgery after tear retracts

Fiona O'Keeffe had proximal hamstring repair surgery last week at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, according to a post from Chris Chavez relaying what O'Keeffe shared. An MRI showed that a partial tear she picked up ahead of the Boston Marathon had progressed into a fully retracted tendon tear in her left leg.

Chris Chavez

@ChrisChavez

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a partial tear sustained ahead of the Boston Marathon had progressed into a fully retracted tendon tear in her left leg

Proximal means the top end of the hamstring, where the tendon attaches at the sit bone. Fully retracted means the tendon has pulled away from that attachment, which is the version of the injury that gets stitched back on rather than rehabbed.

What it means for New York

O'Keeffe had already been announced as part of the elite field for the 2026 New York City Marathon. In last year's race she ran a personal best of 2:22:49 and broke the American course record there.

So the field loses a runner who, on that course, has run faster than any American before her. Chavez's post does not say whether she has formally withdrawn, and there is no return timeline in it, but surgery last week and a marathon this fall do not go together.

The through line back to Boston

The detail that matters is the sequence. This was not a new injury that appeared out of nowhere. The tear existed before Boston, as a partial tear, and the MRI that followed found it had become a complete, retracted one.

That is the whole story as the source tells it, and it is worth being careful about the rest. Nobody in the source says when the tear got worse, whether racing made it worse, or when she will run again. Those are the questions, and right now the answers are not public.

What is public is that one of the fastest American marathoners of the last two years is now post-op instead of on a start line in New York.