Kolkata, Nov 26 (IANS): Israels Lonah Salpeter will be looking to add to her list of accolades at the Tata Steel Kolkata 25K 2019 -- a World Athletics Silver Label Road Race and the only 25 km race among nearly 200 World Athletics Label Road Races, which will be held here on December 15.
Salpeter, who will celebrate her 31st birthday just three days before the race in Kolkata, comes to the City of Joy as the reigning European 10,000m champion after having won her title on the track in Berlin last year.
However, she has gradually been changing her focus to the roads over recent years and won the Prague Marathon in May in a stunning national record of 2:19:46. Salpeter is currently sixth on the marathon world list for 2019 as well as having moved up to third on the European all-time list.
Salpeter went to the World Athletics Championships two months ago being among the medal favourites for the marathon but dropped out in the challenging conditions in Doha. However, she recovered quickly and finished fourth in the Frankfurt Marathon last month in 2:23:11.
The TSK25K will not be Salpeter's first official outing over the distance, she won the famous Berlin 25km race in 2017 in 1:28.48. However, she has run much faster and had a 25km split of 1:23:25 during her Prague Marathon win and if Salpeter is in anything close to this shape she could make huge inroads into the TSK25K women's course record of 1:26:01 set by Ethiopia's Degitu Azimeraw in 2017.
Salpeter's path to her current position as one of the world's leading distance runners is far from a conventional one. Born in Kenya, her early years were living in a small rural village in the very west of the country that had no electricity or running water, but she nevertheless did well enough at school to earn a job as a nanny in the household of the Kenyan ambassador to Israel.
Moving there in 2008, she started running after arriving in Israel just to keep fit. However, in 2011 she met the Israeli international runner Dan Salpeter, the pair fell in love and married in 2014. Her husband-cum-coach also saw her potential as a runner and by 2013 she was winning national titles and her career has been upwards ever since. She now has a myriad of national records to her name from the 1500m to the marathon.