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Lisa Martin

Lisa Martin
Personal information
Birth name Lisa Frances O'Dea
Nationality Australian
Born (1960-05-12) 12 May 1960 (age 56)
Gawler, South Australia
Sport
Country  Australia
Sport Athletics
Event(s) Marathon

Lisa Frances Ondieki (née O'Dea, formerly Martin; born 12 May 1960) is an Australian former long-distance runner. In the marathon, she won the 1988 Olympic silver medal and two Commonwealth Games gold medals. Other marathon victories included the 1988 Osaka International Ladies Marathon and the 1992 New York City Marathon. She also won the Great North Run Half Marathon three times. Her best time for the marathon of 2:23:51, set in 1988, made her the fourth-fastest female marathon runner in history at the time.

Born Lisa O'Dea in Gawler, South Australia, she was originally a 400 m hurdler. Initially reluctant to take up the marathon, she won her first marathon competition, the Rocket City marathon in Huntsville USA in 1983, taking almost five minutes off the Australian record with her time of 2:32:22. In 1984, as Lisa Martin, she finished seventh in the inaugural women's Olympic marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Her time of 2:29:03 was the first of her eleven sub 2:30 marathons. Three months later, she finished second in the Chicago Marathon, with a new personal best time of 2:27:40.

At the 1985 Pittsburgh Marathon, she competed alongside her husband at the time, American distance runner Ken Martin; they became the fastest married couple ever in a marathon winning the men's and women's races in 2:12:57 and 2:31:54 respectively. Later that year, she finished second behind Greta Waitz in the New York City Marathon. She won the gold medal in the marathon at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in a personal best of 2:26:07, with New Zealand's Lorraine Moller in second. A month later, she won the first of her three Great North Run Half Marathon titles in a personal best of 69:45. She ended the 1986 season by again finishing second to Waitz in the New York Marathon. She finished second in the 1987 Osaka marathon, behind Moller, then failed to finish the 1987 World Championship marathon in Rome.


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Wikipedia

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