Marathon’s
World Champion Lidia Simon to stop running for a year
Andrei Nourescu for the IAAF
28 August 2001 – Bucharest, Romania - Lidia Simon, the Romanian athlete who won
the gold medal in the women’s marathon race in Edmonton was welcomed back to
Bucharest as a star, at Ceausescu’s former protocol airport. She said that in
2002 she will not run at all, hoping to bear a child.
Lidia Simon was one of the last gold medallists of the World Championships in Edmonton. The Romanian athlete finally succeeded in winning a major race, and has said that the victory in Edmonton is the greatest success of her career. Lidia Simon, 28, finished 3rd in the marathon at both the World Athletics Championships in Athens 1997 and Seville 1999 and second in the Sydney Olympic marathon. Her only major triumphs till now were three consecutive victories at the Osaka Marathon, in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
Two days after the race in Edmonton, Lidia Simon arrived back in Bucharest, Romania, where the officials welcomed her with the protocol of a Chief of State. The plane stopped not at the normal hub, but in front of a separate terminal, built specially for the former communist president Nicolae Ceausescu. Hundreds of fans offered her “tons” of flowers and in the next few days the Romanian President Iliescu is expecting Lidia, together with Gabriela Szabo, for a private meeting and ceremony.
“Edmonton’s gold is the greatest victory of my life. But I will not stop here, because I want the same colour medal also at the 2004 Athens Olympics”, Simon said.
Lidia has been married since 1993 with her coach Liviu and started athletics at 15. She has 4 younger brothers. “The first thing to do after getting back home is to go to my mother to eat delicious beans, in the middle of my family”, the champion said.
Lidia Simon is a Police officer, Captain in the Internal Affairs Ministry of Romania and she expects to become a Major after her success in Edmonton.
Her husband, Liviu Simon, broke his arm minutes before the finish of the marathon in Edmonton. He was riding a bicycle to see her wife running and he fell while watching a big screen. He has been told about the Lidia’s victory at the phone, from Bucharest, while lying in pain on a street near Edmonton’s Stadium. “Now I have my arm blocked for 3 weeks. I did not feel the pain because of the happiness of finding out my wife’s triumph”.
Lidia Simon spends a lot of time for training in USA, in Colorado and last year she even bought her own house in Boulder. She also owns a house in Oradea, north Romania, sharing the same garden and land with her friend Gabriela Szabo, Athlete of the Year in 1999.
Lidia now intends to have a pause in her athletics career, hoping to have a child in 2002. “I hope God will help me to become a mother and then to get back in competition, for the 2004 Olympiad”, Lidia Simon said. In September, Lidia and her coach will go in holiday in Tunisia.
