How Tommy Rivs went from unable to walk to completing the New York City Marathon (2024)

There are many marathon results that live long in the memory. Kipchoge running the fastest ever time in Berlin in 2018. Paula Radcliffe’s historic London victory in 2003. Yuki Kawauchi’s rain-soaked Boston win in 2018.

Now one from this year’s New York City Marathon can stand alongside those historic moments, for a very different reason.

American runner Tommy Rivers Puzey, otherwise known as Tommy Rivs, was a runner at the top of his game. In 2017 in Boston, he clocked 2:18 to finish 16th, and he’s won a number of prestigious ultramarathons including the 2016 TransRockies 120-miler. But more importantly, he was a man who inspired those around him to reach higher heights, to push themselves further, to strive for that extra 1%.

Then, in the summer of 2020, when people around the glove were adjusting to a new way of operating, Tommy’s own world was knocked off its axis by a different illness. He was struck down by a rare form of lung cancer, a cancer so debilitating it left him in a coma for more than a month.

Miraculously, he regained consciousness, grew strong enough to come off life support and relearned to walk. All this would be hard enough for the average person, but Tommy was not stopping there. He still wanted to push himself and inspire others, and so quietly, and without fanfare, entered the 2021 New York City Marathon, which marked a year since he had begun his journey to learn to walk again.

'Keep moving,' he wrote on his Instagram when he announced his intentions days before the race. 'You’re still here. We all are. As long as you’re moving you’re still here.'

Tommy finished the race in an incredible 9:18:57. Seeing him cross the line left many in tears and blazed an unforgettable trail of positivity and inspiration behind him.

Afterwards, he described it as 'the single most difficult athletic achievement that I’ve ever accomplished'.

'Every day and every moment the positive aspects of our universal humanity are within our reach,' he wrote. 'Individually and collectively, there is always goodness and greatness within our potential.'