Derartu Tulu

Derartu Tulu grew up in Bekoji, a farming town high in the Arsi region of Ethiopia that would later become famous for producing distance runners. She was one of ten children, looked after the family cattle and rode horses, and first ran competitively in a school race she entered almost by accident. Her father did not see the point of a girl running. She kept going anyway, and by her late teens she was training with the national police club in Addis Ababa.

At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 she was 20 and little known outside athletics. She won the 10,000 metres, becoming the first Black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Her lap of honour with Elana Meyer, the white South African who finished second, in the year South Africa returned to the Games, was one of the enduring images of that Olympics.

The years after were harder. Injuries kept her out of form, she finished fourth in Atlanta in 1996, and she stopped to have a daughter. Most people assumed her best days were gone. In Sydney in 2000 she won the 10,000 metres again, and the following year she added the world title.

She moved up to the marathon and in 2009, at 37, won the New York City Marathon, a race in which many had already written her off as a veteran. She went on to lead the Ethiopian Athletics Federation.