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Former great Romanian athlete Constantina Dita, Olympic marathon champion in 2008, has been named ambassador by World Athletics Half Marathon Championships Gdynia 2020, according to the World Athletic Forum Website, as reported by to AGERPRES.
Dita competed at eight editions of the World Half Marathon Championships and earned seven medals in the process, making her one of the most successful athletes in the history of the event. Her double victory in Edmonton in 2005, taking individual and team gold medals, remains one of the highlights of her career, mentioned the said source.
'I was surprised (to win by a significant margin),' she said of her 2005 triumph. 'I was running a normal pace but maybe the opposition found it very cold. For me, it was good weather. I love to run in the rain.
'It was such a happy feeling to win my first gold medal at a major championship. For me, it was amazing and it was close to what it would have felt like to win a gold medal at the track and field World Championships," she said.
Three years after her success in Canada, Constantina Dita won the Olympic gold in Beijing, in the marathon.
She has also won other marathons in his career. In 2004 she won the Chicago Marathon, and a year later she finished second. She also ran three times at the London Marathon.
Currently, Dita divides her time between Romania and the United States, being still involved in sports, as the founder and organizer of the annual Bucharest International 10 km race.
Constantina Dita continues to run at the age of 50, and last year she finished the marathons in Berlin (3 h 07 min) and New York City (3 h 30 min). She hopes to one day run all six Grand Marathons, the only one missing being the one in Boston.
Romania will be represented by six athletes, one man and five women, at the World Half Marathon Championship to be held on 17 October in Gdynia (Poland).
Romania's team consists of Nicolae Soare, Adela Paulina Balti, Liliana Maria Dragomir, Adriana Nelson, Elena Adelina Panaet and Roxana Elisabeta Rotaru.
Given the coronavirus pandemic, the World Half Marathon Championship is the only world athletics competition in 2020, with 283 athletes (157 men and 126 women) to compete, from 62 countries.
The start in the women's race will be at 12:00, Romania time, and in the men's race, at 13:30.
