Maria de lourdes mutola biography of mahatma

Springfield High School was the host school, due to the fact that there was a Portuguese-speaking staff member Mutola spoke no English. Mutola lost out on a medal because she was severely impeded in the final few metres by falling athletes and an unsuccessful protest was lodged. She ran strongly but faded badly in the home straight, eventually finishing fifth behind eventual winner Ellen van Langen.

At the same Games, Mutola ran her only m at an international championship, placing 9th in the final. A favourite for the world outdoor title in as well, she was disqualified in her semi final for stepping outside of her lane. Some consolation came at the Memorial van Damme meeting a few weeks after the championships, when she broke the world record for m, becoming the first woman ever to run the distance in less than two and a half minutes.

She also went on to break the world indoor record for m. Her immense success and her total domination of the event during this period can be attributed to the guidance that she has received since from Margo Jennings. Jennings was a track coach at Springfield High School and continued to coach Mutola, even when she had relocated from Oregon to Johannesburg to escape the high pollen count.

However, suffering from the flu, she ended up finishing third behind Svetlana Masterkova and Ana Quirot. Later in Mutola lost her world m record to Masterkova. Mutola is often ranked as the greatest female m runner of all time. She has not gained a world record, but her consistency, her record at major championships and her ability to compete at the highest levels of the sport for well over a decade are unmatched.

The Olympics were her sixth successive Olympics. She raced wearing a black ribbon and dedicated the victory to his memory. In total she has won nine world m titles, including both indoor and outdoor championships. Her greatest moment, though, came at the Sydney Olympics in , when Mutola finally won Olympic gold. She returned to Mozambique after her Olympic victory, huge crowds came to cheer her and a road was named after her in Maputo.

She continued her successes in the season, grabbing the world title in Edmonton and again in in Paris. It was widely felt that Mutola ran tactically during the race by setting a slow pace in order to aid her training partner Kelly Holmes. She is a retired female track and field athlete from Mozambique who specialized in the metres running event.

She is only the fourth athlete to compete at six Olympic Games. She is a three-time world champion in this event and a one-time Olympic champion. Mutola never broke the world record in her favorite event but she is regarded by many track insiders and fans as one of the greatest metres female runners of all time due to her consistently good results in major championships and her exceptional longevity which saw her compete at the highest level for two decades before retiring from athletics in at the age of She is also the only athlete ever to have won Olympic, World, World indoor, Commonwealth Games, Continental Games and Continental Championships titles in the same event.

Attempts were made to organise scholarships for her to train abroad, but it was not until that, thanks to an IOC solidarity programme, she was awarded a scholarship to go to the United States to study and train. Springfield High School in Oregon was her host school, due to the fact that there was a Portuguese-speaking staff member since Mutola spoke no English.

She quickly surprised many by finishing fourth in the final of the World Championships in Tokyo, where her time of Mutola lost out on a medal because she was severely impeded, elbowed twice by Ella Kovacs as she tried to pass in the final few metres. On the finish line, Kovacs fell across the line ahead of Mutola, reaching out and tripping race winner Lilia Nurutdinova as well.

A protest was lodged but it was unsuccessful. She ran strongly but faded badly in the home straight, eventually finishing fifth behind winner Ellen van Langen. At the same Olympics, Mutola ran one of the few m races at an international championship, placing ninth in the final. Over the next few years, Mutola dominated the m event, winning the m title at the and World Indoor Championships and the World Championships.

At the latter event, held in Stuttgart , she won by over two seconds, the biggest ever winning margin in an international women's m final. Some consolation came at the Memorial Van Damme meeting in Brussels a few weeks after the World Championships, when she broke the world record for m with a time of She also went on to break the world indoor record for m.

Her immense success and her total domination of the event during this period can be attributed to the guidance that she has received since from Margo Jennings. Jennings was a track coach at Springfield High School and continued to coach Mutola, even when she had relocated from Oregon to Johannesburg to escape the high pollen count in Oregon.

Jennings would fax Mutola's training schedules to her in South Africa, and has also coached other world class m runners like Kelly Holmes , Namibian athlete Agnes Samaria and Tina Paulino , who is a distant relative of Mutola's. At the Summer Olympics in Atlanta , Mutola was a hot favourite for the gold, as she hadn't been beaten in an m final since and her winning streak stretched to over forty m and m finals.

However, suffering from flu, she ended up finishing third behind surprise winner Svetlana Masterkova and Ana Quirot. The Russians had also used team tactics with Masterkova's teammate and Britain's Kelly Holmes working to box in both Quirot and Mutola with Masterkova in front, leaving them too much ground to make up near the end. Later in Mutola lost her world m record to Masterkova in a hard-fought head-to-head duel.

Mutola was known as the complete package as an metre runner. She had tremendous strength, and would turn in numerous impressive metres performances through her career. She had blazing speed, and a very strong finishing kick. She also was a smart and calculated tactical racer, who understood her competitors and their strengths and weaknesses well, and how to position herself throughout a race.

She was comfortable running and winning races from either the front or the back. Most of all she had an unwavering determination to win, rarely ever matched in women's middle-distance running. Mutola is often ranked as one of the greatest female m runners of all time, and to some even the best. She has not gained a world record in the event, but her consistency, her performances at major championships and her ability to compete at the highest levels of the sport for two decades are unmatched — the Olympics were her sixth consecutive Olympics.

She does however have a 0—4 record against her rival Ana Quirot in World and Olympic competition, and Quirot ran sub twice vs. Mutola's career best of Mutola and Quirot are good friends to this day and often write one another, and Mutola often wrote Quirot letters of encouragement to return to Track and Field following her near fatal heavy burn explosion.

She raced wearing a black ribbon and dedicated the victory to his memory.

Maria de lourdes mutola biography of mahatma

In total she has won nine world m titles, including both indoor and outdoor championships. Her greatest moment, though, came at the Sydney Olympics in , when Mutola finally won Olympic gold. She gave financial support that allowed an artificial track to be constructed on the sports ground at which she had originally trained as a fifteen-year-old.

She also authorised the sale of T-shirts that featured her image, profits from which went towards helping the Grupo Desportivo de Maputo out of financial difficulty. After retiring from athletics she returned to her first sporting love, football. She played for Mamelodi Sundowns team in the South African women's league. In , she was captain of the Mozambique women's national football team at the All-Africa Games in Maputo.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Mozambican middle-distance runner. Medal record. Career [ edit ]. Early years [ edit ]. Studying and training in the United States [ edit ]. Athletic domination [ edit ]. This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources.

Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. Status in m race history [ edit ]. This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous.

Other work [ edit ]. Achievements [ edit ]. International competitions [ edit ]. Personal bests [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. BBC News.