Lidia Șimon

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.

Șimon has experienced much success at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships, taking individual silver and team gold at her first championships in 1996. She went on to take individual bronze medals at the 1997, 1998 and 2000 editions of the championships, in addition to further team gold and silver medals with Romania. Her personal best time of 1:08:34 hours over the distance is the Romanian record.

She was the winner at the first edition of the combined Osaka Marathon in October 2011.

Among other achievements on the international road racing circuit, she won the Bolder Boulder 10K and Sapporo Half Marathon in 1999, and the Boilermaker Road Race and Shanghai Marathon in 2007.