Boston Marathon

Boston Marathon survivor Adrianne Haslet returns to race with assist from Olympian Shalane Flanagan

Haslet, now fully recovered from a 2019 car accident, aims to win the Boston Marathon's recently established para division with Flanagan as her support runner.

By Khari Thompson

April 14, 2022

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Adrianne Haslet’s long road back to the Boston Marathon is nearly at its end. When she finally begins Monday’s race, she’ll have her friend and inspiration beside her.

Haslet, who lost her leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, will return to the iconic race for the first time in four years as a para-athlete with Olympian Shalane Flanagan as her support runner.

“Every time I envisioned running the race, I pictured her next to me. So this last December, I got really brave and asked her to join me, side by side from Hopkinton to Boston, as my teammate, my coach, and my support runner,” Haslet wrote on Instagram of Flanagan, a Marblehead native. “I told her I couldn’t imagine crossing that finish line without her by my side. She said yes.”

The 41-year-old Haslet, a ballroom dancer who became a running enthusiast as she coped with life after the bombing, ran the Boston Marathon in 2016 with the help of a prosthetic blade and finished the race. After being unable to finish in 2018, she aimed to return to the course again in 2019. But a car accident in January of that year left her hospitalized with serious injuries that required surgery.

Now fully recovered, she has been training with Flanagan since January with the hopes of winning one of the Marathon’s para divisions, which Haslet had long advocated for. The divisions were first instituted in the 2021 Marathon last fall.

“It is one thing to accomplish a goal that you’ve set out for yourself to achieve,” Flanagan, a four-time Olympian and New York Marathon winner, wrote. “But sometimes it feels even more special to get out there and help another accomplish theirs.”

The Boston Marathon is returning to its traditional start date on Patriots Day for the first time in three years after a pandemic cancellation in 2020 and a postponement until October last year.

Haslet, Flanagan, and the rest of the para divisions are set to start their races at approximately 9:50 am, just after the elite women’s division.