Three-time U.S. Olympian Jenny Simpson has revealed that her running career is officially over. Simpson’s diagnosis came after she went into cardiac arrest while pacing a mile group at a track in North Carolina back in June.
According to sources, CPR and an automated external defibrillator kept her alive at the scene before paramedics rushed her to the hospital. Doctors later determined she has arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, a rare condition in which scar tissue forms in the heart and interferes with its electrical signals. In Simpson’s case, that disruption caused her heart to stop.
The 39-year-old shared the news in an Instagram post, thanking the people who saved her life and explaining what the diagnosis means going forward.
“My future is an incredible gift. It’s hopeful, and it will continue to have great purpose,” Simpson wrote. “But my diagnosis also means it would be dangerous for me to return to running. That chapter has ended. Thankfully, my story hasn’t.”
Simpson took bronze in the 1,500 meters at the 2016 Rio Olympics, one of the signature achievements of a career built on outkicking the world’s best. She won world championship gold in the 1,500 in 2011 and added silver medals in 2013 and 2017. Before any of that, she was piling up national titles as a collegiate standout at the University of Colorado, and she once held the American record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.
Notably, June’s health scare wasn’t the moment Simpson stepped away from elite competition. She had already shifted her focus away from the track years earlier, closing out that portion of her career by moving up to the marathon.
Speaking about that transition before her diagnosis, Simpson described the shift not as walking away from the sport but as loosening its grip on her life. She said she wasn’t ready to stop running altogether, only ready to stop being confined to a single, narrowly competitive version of it.
She talked about wanting to open herself up to the sport in a broader way, connecting with people and places rather than chasing times and podiums.
Simpson stated, “It feels so perfect that I’m going to race a New York City marathon. I know I want to do that in my career and so yeah, it’s just the right timing.”
That chapter had already taken shape in dramatic fashion. Simpson and her husband set off on a cross-country trip in a 23-foot Winnebago with their two dogs, aiming to visit 50 states in 50 weeks, inviting fans along the way to help guide their route through the country’s back roads and hidden running communities.
