Bai Xue
Bai at the 2009 World Championships
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15 December 1988 (age 28) Heilongjiang, China |
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Medal record
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Bai Xue (Chinese: 白雪; name means White Snow; born 15 December 1988 in Heilongjiang) is a female Chinese long-distance runner who specializes in the 10,000 metres.
Bai won both the 5000 and the 10,000 metres at the 2005 Asian Championships, and finished fourth in 10,000 m at the 2006 World Junior Championships. She finished twenty-first in the 10,000 metres at the Olympic Games. She won the Beijing Marathon in 2008.
The Berlin 2009 Marathon event was Bai's first time to take part in World Championships and only second time to take part in an international marathon. She won the 2009 World Championships Women's Marathon gold medal becoming the youngest ever women's world marathon champion at the age of 20. Bai pulled away from Japan's Yoshimi Ozaki in the last kilometer to finish the 42.195 km race in two hours 25 minutes and 15 seconds. Ozaki took silver in 2:25:25 and Aselefech Mergia of Ethiopia finished third in 2:25:32. Bai's teammate Zhou Chunxiu, silver winner in Osaka 2007 and bronze medalist in the 2008 Summer Olympics, was fourth in 2:25:39. Another two Chinese runners Zhu Xiaolin, fourth finisher in Osaka, and Sun Weiwei, finished fifth in 2:26:08 and 2:29:39 respectively.
Bai Xue became the first Chinese athlete to win a marathon race at the World Championships. It was also the first gold medal for China in event in Berlin, taking its medal tally to 1-1-2. And it was also the first gold in 10 years for Chinese women athletes' at the world championships. Liu Hongyu won the last gold medal in the women's 10 km walk in Seville 1999. She is also the second Chinese to win a major international marathon after Zhou Chunxiu, who took the London Marathon title in 2007. She returned to China after the championships and defended her title at the Beijing Marathon, beating young national opposition in Zhang Xin and Zhu Xiaoling.
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