Mariana Diaz Ximenez, (born December 13, 1983, in Baucau), is an East Timorese athlete who specialises in the marathon.
A resident of Dili, she fled her home in 1999 after East Timor's declaration of independence from Indonesia, and the ensuing violence. When she returned to the capital, she "saw the Dili harbor filled with the bloated bodies of the dead". [1]
In 2001, Diaz won a gold medal in the marathon at the Arafura Games in Australia. [2] In 2002, she represented the newly independent country at the Asian Games in Busan, where she ran the marathon. [3]
Having attempted unsuccessfully to qualify for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Diaz was one of the two representatives of Timor-Leste at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. [4] However, she did not finish the race.
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East Timor (Timor-Leste) competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China which was held from 8 to 24 August. The country's participation at Beijing marked its second appearance in the Summer Olympics since its debut in the 2004 Summer Olympics. The delegation included Augusto Ramos Soares and Mariana Diaz Ximenez, both of whom were marathoners that qualified via wildcard places as the nation had no athletes that met the "A" or "B" qualifying standards. Ximenez was selected as flag bearer for the opening ceremony. Neither of the two athletes finished their events; Soares did not even start.
Aguida Amaral is an East Timorese athlete. She was one of the first athletes to represent East Timor at the Olympic Games, and the first woman to represent the nation, when she ran the marathon at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She technically competed as an individual athlete because East Timor was newly independent and had not yet been formally recognized by the International Olympic Committee. With a time of 3:10:55, she finished 43rd out of the 45 runners who completed the race, although eight other runners failed to finish.
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East Timor competed in the 2002 Asian Games held in Busan, South Korea, from September 29 to October 14, 2002. East Timor was the newest Asian country—it declared its independence four months before the Games on May 20, 2002—and participated in the Asian Games for the first time after the independence from Indonesia. Indonesia invaded the nation on December 7, 1975, and left in October 19, 1999 after the UN-supervised referendum.
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Juventina Napoleão is an East Timorese long distance runner. She represented her country in the marathon event at the 2012 Summer Olympics and finished the race with a time of 3:05:07.
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