1. Maria de Lurdes Mutola is a retired Mozambican female track and field who specialised in the 800 metres running event.
41 Facts About Maria Mutola
1. 2.
Maria Mutola is only the fourth female track and field athlete to compete at six Olympic Games.
3.
Maria Mutola is a three-time world champion in this event and a one-time Olympic champion.
4.
Maria Mutola is the only athlete ever to have won Olympic, World, World indoor, Commonwealth Games, Continental Games and Continental Championships titles in the same event.
5.
Maria Mutola is the main coach and mentor of Caster Semenya.
6.
Maria Mutola was born in 1972 in the poor shanty town of Chamanculo on the outskirts of Maputo, then known as Lourenco Marques, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique.
7.
Maria Mutola's father was employed by the railways and her mother was a market vendor.
8.
Maria Mutola played with boys, as there were no leagues or teams for girls.
9.
Not used to the intensive training, Maria Mutola initially decided that running was not for her, but was persuaded to continue when it became obvious that she had immense potential.
10.
Maria Mutola ran a personal best time of 2:04.36, but only finished seventh in her first round heat, failing to progress to the semi-finals.
11.
Maria Mutola faced little opposition in Mozambique and only trained properly in the run-up to big competitions.
12.
Maria Mutola lost out on a medal because she was severely impeded, elbowed twice by Ella Kovacs as she tried to pass in the final few metres.
13.
Maria Mutola ran strongly but faded badly in the home straight, eventually finishing fifth behind winner Ellen van Langen.
14.
Maria Mutola went on to break the world indoor record for 1000 m Maria Mutola went undefeated vs that years World Champion Ana Quirot, including crushing Quirot at the season ending Grand Prix final where she finished 1st to Quirot's 5th.
15.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Maria Mutola was a hot favourite for the gold, as she hadn't been beaten in an 800 m final since 1992 and her winning streak stretched to over forty 800 m and 1000 m finals.
16.
Later in 1996 Maria Mutola lost her world 1000 m record to Masterkova in a hard-fought head-to-head duel.
17.
Maria Mutola was known as the complete package as an 800-metre runner.
18.
Maria Mutola had tremendous strength, and would turn in numerous impressive 1500 metres performances through her career.
19.
Maria Mutola had blazing speed, and a very strong finishing kick.
20.
Maria Mutola was a smart and calculated tactical racer, who understood her competitors and their strengths and weaknesses well, and how to position herself throughout a race.
21.
Maria Mutola was comfortable running and winning races from either the front or the back.
22.
Maria Mutola won bronze in the 1997 IAAF World Championships in Athletics and silver in 1999.
23.
Maria Mutola won the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics in 1997, only weeks after her father had been killed in a car accident.
24.
Maria Mutola raced wearing a black ribbon and dedicated the victory to his memory.
25.
Maria Mutola won the Commonwealth Games twice, after Mozambique was admitted to the Commonwealth in 1995, and has won the IAAF World Cup event, representing the Africa team, four times consecutively.
26.
Maria Mutola beat her major rival Stephanie Graf and Kelly Holmes.
27.
Maria Mutola returned to Mozambique after her Olympic victory, huge crowds came to cheer her and a road was named after her in Maputo.
28.
Maria Mutola continued her successes in the 2001 season, grabbing the world title in Edmonton and again in 2003 in Paris.
29.
Maria Mutola was unbeaten throughout 2003 and grabbed the headlines again that year, at the Memorial Van Damme race in Belgium.
30.
Maria Mutola put part of her winnings towards the foundation that she had established in her name in Mozambique.
31.
Maria Mutola finished fourth in the 800 m at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki; third-place winner Tatyana Andrianova was retroactively suspended for a doping violation in 2015.
32.
Maria Mutola parted amicably with her coach Margo Jennings, before returning to good form in 2006, when she won the World Indoor Championships title for a record seventh time.
33.
At the 2007 IAAF World Championships, Maria Mutola was in contention for a medal entering into the home straight, but pulled out of the race in the dying metres.
34.
In 2008, the 800 metres African record held by Maria Mutola, was beaten by the young Pamela Jelimo of Kenya.
35.
Maria Mutola had decided that the 2008 Olympic Games would be her last major championships, and she finished fifth in the 800 metres Olympic final.
36.
Maria Mutola publicly called an end to her 21-year-long athletics career at the Weltklasse Zurich meeting immediately after the Olympics.
37.
Maria Mutola was appointed an honorary United Nations youth ambassador in 2003 at a ceremony in Maputo, in recognition of her outstanding athletic achievements.
38.
Indeed, her Lurdes Maria Mutola Foundation aims to bring more young Mozambicans to sport and to assist in helping them achieve their sporting and educational potential.
39.
Maria Mutola gave financial support that allowed an artificial track to be constructed on the sports ground at which she had originally trained as a fifteen-year-old.
40.
Maria Mutola authorised the sale of T-shirts that featured her image, profits from which went towards helping the Grupo Desportivo de Maputo out of financial difficulty.
41.
Maria Mutola played for Mamelodi Sundowns team in the South African women's league.