Degaga "Mamo" Wolde was an Ethiopian long distance runner who competed in track, cross-country, and road running events. He was the winner of the marathon at the 1968 Summer Olympics.
Haile Gebrselassie is an Ethiopian former long-distance track, road running athlete, and businessman. He won two Olympic gold medals and four World Championship titles over the 10,000 metres. Haile triumphed in the Berlin Marathon four times consecutively and also had three straight wins at the Dubai Marathon. He also earned four world titles indoors and was the 2001 World Half Marathon Champion.
Ronald William Clarke, AO, MBE was an Australian athlete, writer, and the Mayor of the Gold Coast from 2004 to 2012. He was one of the best-known middle- and long-distance runners in the 1960s, notable for setting seventeen world records.
Shambel Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He was the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning his first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he won his second gold medal, making him the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. In both victories, he ran in world record time.
Lasse Artturi Virén is a Finnish former long-distance runner, winner of four gold medals at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. Virén recaptured the image of the "Flying Finns" promoted by runners like Hannes Kolehmainen, Paavo Nurmi and Ville Ritola in the 1920s. He was elected Finnish Sportsman of the Year in 1972 and 1976 and later became a politician and a member of Finland's parliament in 1999–2007 and 2010–2011.
Steve Roland "Pre" Prefontaine was a US-American long-distance runner who from 1973 to 1975 set American records at every distance from 2,000 to 10,000 meters. He competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics, and was preparing for the 1976 Olympics with the Oregon Track Club at the time of his death in 1975.
Robert Keyser Schul was an American long-distance runner. As of 2024, he is the only American to have won an Olympic gold medal in the 5000 m, at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
William Mervin Mills, also known by his Oglala Lakota name Tamakhóčhe Theȟíla, is an American Oglala Lakota former track and field athlete who won a gold medal in the 10,000 metre run (6.2 mi) at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. His 1964 victory is considered one of the greatest Olympic upsets because he was a virtual unknown going into the event. He was the first non-European to win the Olympic event and remains the only winner from the Americas. He was also a United States Marine officer.
Mohammed Tlili ben Abdallah, also known as Moham(m)ed Gammoudi, is a Tunisian athlete who competed as a long-distance runner in international track and field competitions. He represented Tunisia in the Tokyo, Mexico City, and Munich Olympiads and recorded four medals, including a gold medal in the 5000 metres event in Mexico City. Gammoudi was also competitive at 10,000 metres.
Nabiba Naftali Temu was a Kenyan long-distance runner. He became Kenya's first gold medalist when he won the 10,000 metres race at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Gerald "Gerry" Paul Lindgren is an American track and field runner who set many long-standing high school and national records in the United States. In 1965, Lindgren and Billy Mills both broke the world record for the six-mile run when they finished in an extremely rare tie at the AAU National Championships, both running exactly 27:11.6. Lindgren went on to win a record 11 NCAA collegiate championships with Washington State University.
Dathan James Ritzenhein is a retired American long-distance runner, and current head coach of the On Athletics Club (OAC). He held the American record in the 5,000 metres (12:56.27) from 2009 to 2010, until it was broken by Bernard Lagat. He is a three-time national cross country champion with wins at the USA Cross Country Championships in 2005, 2008 and 2010. Formerly a Nike athlete for the majority of his professional career, Dathan joined the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project team in 2017. In early May 2020, he announced his retirement from competition. He signed with the Swiss shoe brand On shortly thereafter in June 2020 and currently acts as the coach for the OAC in Boulder, Colorado.
The 10,000 metres or the 10,000-metre run is a common long-distance track running event. The event is part of the athletics programme at the Olympic Games and the World Athletics Championships, and is common at championship-level events. The race consists of 25 laps around an Olympic-sized track. It is less commonly held at track and field meetings due to its duration. The 10,000-metre track race is usually distinguished from its road running counterpart, the 10K run, by referring to the distance in metres rather than kilometres.
Galen Rupp is an American long-distance runner. He competed in the Summer Olympics in 2008 in Beijing, 2012 in London, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and 2021 in Tokyo. He won the silver medal in the men's 10,000 meters in London and the bronze medal in the men's marathon in Rio de Janeiro. Rupp competed for the University of Oregon and trained under Alberto Salazar as a member of the Nike Oregon Project. He won the 2017 Chicago Marathon, becoming the first American to do so since Khalid Khannouchi in 2002. Rupp won the marathon at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials in Atlanta with a time of 2:09:20, and qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, where he finished eighth.
Benjamin Basil Heatley was a British competitive long-distance runner, who was an Olympic marathon silver medallist and former world marathon record-holder. Although he favoured cross country running, he was also a skilled marathon runner and, despite running shoe technology being in its infancy, he was able to adapt easily to the change of conditions underfoot.
The men's marathon at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany was held on Sunday September 10, 1972. The race started at 15:00h local time. There were 74 competitors from 39 countries. Twelve of them did not finish. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The event was won by Frank Shorter of the United States, the nation's first Olympic marathon victory since 1908 and third overall. Karel Lismont won Belgium's second medal in the marathon with his silver. Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia became only the second man, after his countryman Abebe Bikila, to win two medals in the marathon. Ethiopia's four-Games medal streak was matched only by Finland (1920–1932).
Lisa Uhl is an American runner. She is a four-time NCAA Division One champion, former NCAA record holder in the 10,000 meters, and the sixth fastest American woman to ever cover that distance. She competed in the 10,000 meters in the 2012 Summer Olympics. She competed for Iowa State University.
The men's 5000 metres at the 1971 European Athletics Championships was held in Helsinki, Finland, at Helsinki Olympic Stadium on 12 and 14 August 1971.
The women's 10,000 metres event at the 2016 Summer Olympics took place on 12 August at the Olympic Stadium. The gold medal was won by Ethiopian Almaz Ayana—in only her second 10,000 m race on the track—in a world record time of 29 minutes, 17.45 seconds. London 2012 bronze medallist Vivian Cheruiyot won silver for Kenya, with reigning Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia taking bronze.
The women's 10,000 metres event at the 2020 Summer Olympics took place on 7 August 2021 at the Japan National Stadium. 29 athletes competed.
