Lidia Șimon

Lidia Șimon

Șimon at the 2009 World Championships
Personal information
Born	(1973-09-04) 4 September 1973 (age 43) Târgu Cărbunești, Romania
Height	1.60 m (5 ft 3 in)
Weight	43 kg (95 lb)
Sport
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	10,000 m, marathon
Club	Dinamo Bucureşti
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	10,000 m – 31:32.64 (1998) Marathon – 2:22.54 (2000)
Medal record Women's athletics Representing  Romania Olympic Games 2000 Sydney Marathon World Championships 2001 Edmonton Marathon 1997 Athens Marathon 1999 Sevilla Marathon

Lidia Slăvuțeanu-Șimon (born 4 September 1973) is a Romanian long-distance runner. She was the only woman to have competed in the Olympic marathon five times (1996–2012), winning a silver medal at the 2000 Olympics, until the Chilean Erika Olivera finish in Rio de Janeiro 2016. She is also a former marathon world champion.

Competing in the marathon, she won bronze medals at the World Championships in 1997 and 1999, before finally winning the gold medal in Edmonton 2001. She won a bronze medal over 10,000 metres at the 1998 European Championships.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney she won the silver medal behind Naoko Takahashi, Japan but ahead of Joyce Chepchumba, Kenya. Between 2003 and early 2004, she took a break from running to concentrate on her baby. She returned to compete at the 2004 Summer Olympics, but she failed to finish the race. She finished the 2008 Olympic marathon in eighth place. At the age of 38, she competed in her fifth Olympic marathon (the first woman to do so) in London, finishing 45th overall.

She has been highly successful at the Osaka Ladies Marathon, winning three times consecutively from 1998 to 2000. Her personal best in the marathon came during her win in 2000, in which she finished with a time of 2:22:54. In 2000 she appeared several times on Japanese variety television shows, running handicap races against teams of Japanese TV tarentos.