Olympic Marathon bronze medallist Vanderlei de Lima of Brazil and Tanzania’s World Half Marathon champion Fabiano Joseph will take part in the next ING Amsterdam Marathon on 15 October 2006.
Vanderlei de Lima, 36, has made many winning Marathons in his career. His personal best of 2:08:31 now dates back to 1998 but in his career he has taken victories in Reims (1994), Tokyo (1996; 2nd in 1998), São Paulo (2002) and Hamburg (2004). He was also third in Fukuoka in 1999, third in Rotterdam in 2000, and was Pan Am Games champion in 2003.
However, historically his name will never be lost because of this run at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the incident which surrounded it. There de Lima hung on for bronze after he had been jostled by a defrocked Irish priest who jumped onto the marathon route, while Vanderlei was in leading the race! For his good sporting behaviour in handling this incident he was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for sportsmanship by the IOC.
Notably, the Brazilian has yet to complete another marathon since his third place finish in Athens.
Nothing as shocking as that incident has taken place during any race which Tanzanian Fabiano Joseph has run but the moment in which just before the finish line in the 2005 World Half Marathon Championship in Canada he caught and past a surprised Hassan Mubarak Shami of Qatar for gold will live long in the memory.
Joseph, who is only 20years of age, has won two silver medals at the World Half Marathon Championships, in 2003 and 2004, with the first of these leading to his current half marathon personal best (60:52).
