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A little less than a month away from the sound of the starting gun (November 25, 2018, beginning in Piazza Duomo at 8:30 am), the Firenze Marathon officially announces the participation of a super top runner who will enrich and lead the women’s race during this 35th edition of the Asics Firenze Marathon. We’re talking about Israeli athlete Lonah Chemtai Salpeter, the 29-year-old European champion of the 10-thousand-meter race in Berlin last August with a time of 31’43’’29.
Salpeter represented Israel for the first time in a worldwide marathon at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She has also run the London IAAF World Champion Marathon last August, 2017. Her time for the marathon distance was an excellent 2 hours, 40 minutes, 16 seconds at the Berlin marathon in 2016, but now she has improved greatly.
Recently she was the best European female at the IAAF worldwide half marathon championship in Valencia in March, finishing in 12th place with a national record of 1:08’58”, a record which was recently improved on October 14 in Lisbon, when she ran the half marathon in 1 hour, 7 minutes and 55 seconds. This set a new record by 2 seconds, previously held by Mary Keitany in 2011. Salpeter also ran the 10 km in just 31’35’’.
Following high altitude training in France, Salpeter traveled to Iten, Kenya to begin preparing for the Firenze Marathon on November 25.
The young athlete has declared that her objective is to win the Asics Firenze Marathon and even achieve the record of the female race, which was set in 2002 when Slovenian Helena Javornik ran the race in 2’28’’15. Among the other European marathon winners that will be running in the lead pack are Italians Anna Incerti (2003), Vincenza Sicari (2006-07) and Giovanna Volpato (2008), while the last European winner in Florence was Oleksandr Sitkovskyy who in 2013 won the men’s race in 2:09’14’’.
We also want to remind you to keep an eye on Belorussian Volha Mazuronak, who ran the marathon in 2:25’25.
On her Facebook page, Lonah posts news and lots of videos documenting her training as the prepares for the Asics Firenze Marathon, including her times across varying distances that seem to confirm the possibility that she could meet the ambitious goals she has set for the race.
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