Grete Waitz

Grete Waitz, born Andersen, lived from 1 October 1953 to 19 April 2011 and was a Norwegian marathon runner and former world record holder. In 1979 at the New York City Marathon she became the first woman to run the marathon in under two and a half hours, and she won that race nine times between 1978 and 1988, the most victories in a single big city marathon in history. She won the silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and gold at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, and she was a five time winner of the World Cross Country Championships. She set four marathon world records, two at 3000 metres, and further records at 8 kilometres, 10 kilometres, 15 kilometres and 10 miles, and won 12 World Marathon Majors, the most for any runner.