Cardiac event reveals Olympian's rare heart condition: "There was a God present"
Olympian Jenny Simpson said she won't be able to run again after being diagnosed with a rare heart condition earlier this year.
Updated on: August 21, 2026 / 2:44 PM EDT / CBS News
Three-time Olympian Jenny Simpson built her entire life around running — but after a sudden cardiac event two months ago revealed a hidden rare disease and nearly killed her, she is embarking on a new kind of race.
Simpson, 39, had helped a group of girls pace themselves during a milelong run in Raleigh, North Carolina, in June moments before she collapsed. She told CBS News she doesn't remember anything that happened that day. But Ivy and Joey Pointer will never forget it.
Joey Pointer is the CEO of the company Fleet Feet, which hired Simpson as its chief running officer earlier this year. Ivy is a pediatric intensive care unit physician. The pair aren't just Simpson's co-workers and friends: They are also the parents of a child with a congenital heart disease, so they carry an automated external defibrillator. That meant when Simpson collapsed, they had all the tools necessary to rush to her side.
"When I looked over from afar, I knew that something was very, very wrong," Ivy told CBS News. "So I told Joey to grab an AED and ran over and got there. ... I just remember thinking like, 'This can't happen right now. Like we have a lot happening soon and that this is not going to happen right now. You are going to fight. You're going to hold on. You have to wake up.' And I just kept saying her name and kind of screaming her name, honestly."
Simpson, a bronze medalist in the 1,500 meters at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, had spent the last year on a 50-state running tour with her husband Jason, joining local groups in scenic, far-flung places. If she had experienced a cardiac event without lifesaving resources nearby, her story might have had a different ending.