Talk to Vermont runner Elle Purrier St. Pierre last summer and she’d tell you about being eight weeks pregnant when she failed to qualify for the 2022 world championship finals, only to stop competing entirely after giving birth to her son in 2023.
But tune in to live 2024 Olympic coverage on Saturday and you’d see the 29-year-old Montgomery dairy farmer bounce back, in sunglasses no less, to compete in the women’s 1500-meter race in Paris.
Purrier St. Pierre, U.S. record holder for the indoor one- and two-mile, finished eighth in a field of 12 international athletes, with her 3:57.52 time besting her 10th-place finish at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo games in 2021.
“Having a Baby Didn’t Slow Down Olympian Elle Purrier St. Pierre,” summed up a headline in Time magazine.
Hundreds of Vermonters who watched the Thursday semifinals at the runner’s alma mater of Richford Junior-Senior High School and at Montgomery’s Phineas Swann Inn and Spa returned for the Saturday race.
“We’re all very excited about having a local athlete,” said Darren Drevik, a former Olympic reporter before he and his wife bought the inn 12 years ago. “We just cheer like crazy when Elle shows up on the screen.”
Purrier St. Pierre’s journey has sparked plenty of media shout-outs, including a recent interview with Time.
“It was a hard decision to have a baby and put my career on pause,” she told the magazine. “And so now that I have done that, I just feel like this piece of me that was missing is now here. I feel more complete and so I’m more level-headed and happy. That’s just all around good for my career.”
Purrier St. Pierre is one of three Summer Games athletes with Green Mountain State ties. Burlington rugby player Ilona Maher, 27, helped the U.S. women’s team win a bronze medal, while Norwich rower William Bender, 23, joined fellow Dartmouth College alum Oliver Bub in the men’s pairs competition.
