Catherine Ndereba

Catherine Nyambura Ndereba is a retired Kenyan marathon runner, born on 21 July 1972 and nicknamed Catherine the Great. Between 2003 and 2008 she finished in the top two in five successive global championship marathons. She twice won the marathon at the World Championships in Athletics, took Olympic silver medals in 2004 and 2008 as Kenya's first female multi-medalist, and won the Boston Marathon four times and the Chicago Marathon twice. At Chicago in 2001 she broke the women's marathon world record with 2:18:47. She comes from Gatunganga in Nyeri District, was recruited to athletics by the Kenya Prisons Service in 1994 and retired in 2012, described by the Chicago Tribune as the greatest women's marathoner of all time.