Grete Waitz biography

 Grete Waitz biography

 Grete Waitz, née Grete Andersen, (born October 1, 1953, Oslo, Norway—died April 19, 2011, Oslo), Norwegian marathoner who dominated girls’s long-distance working for greater than a decade, profitable the New York City Marathon 9 instances between 1978 and 1988 (she didn't compete in 1981 or 1987).

Waitz started as a middle-distance runner and at age 17 set a 1,500-metre European junior report (4 min 17 sec). She competed at that distance within the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and broke the three,000-metre world report in 1975 (8 min 46.6 sec) and once more in 1976 (8 min 45.4 sec). Although Waitz was reluctant to try her first New York City Marathon in 1978, she received the race in a time of two hr 32 min 30 sec, greater than two minutes beneath the earlier greatest end. That yr she captured her first of 5 titles within the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) girls’s cross-country world championship (1978–81, 1983). In 1979 she turned the primary girl to complete the New York City Marathon in beneath 2.5 hours (2 hr 27 min 33 sec) and broke that point by nearly two minutes in 1980 (2 hr 25 min 41 sec). Waitz additionally raced within the London Marathon, profitable in 1983 and 1986; her private greatest race was on the latter occasion (2 hr 24 min 54 sec). In addition, she captured the gold medal within the inaugural girls’s marathon on the 1983 IAAF track-and-field world championships and received the silver medal within the first Olympic girls’s marathon, on the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

Waitz retired in 1990 after ending fourth in her remaining New York City Marathon, however two years later she ran as race founder Fred Lebow’s associate. She was the primary non-American inducted (2000) into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame. In 2008, three years after she was identified with most cancers, Waitz was awarded the Order of St. Olav by Norwegian King Harald V.