Maria de lourdes mutola biography of williams

Mozambican middle-distance runner

Maria de Lurdes Mutola (mə-REE-ə moo-TOH-lə; born 27 October 1972) is a retired Mozambican female track and field who specialised in the 800 metres running event. She is only the fourth female track and field athlete to compete at six Olympic Games. She is a three-time world champion in this event and a one-time Olympic champion.

Although Mutola never broke the world record in her favourite event, she is regarded by many track insiders and fans as one of the greatest 800 metres female runners of all time due to her consistently good results in major championships and her exceptional longevity which saw her compete at the highest level for two decades before retiring from athletics in 2008 at the age of 35. She is also the only athlete ever to have won Olympic, World, World indoor, Commonwealth Games, Continental Games and Continental Championships titles in the same event. She is also the main coach and mentor of Caster Semenya.

Career

Early years

Mutola was born in 1972 in the poor shanty town of Chamanculo on the outskirts of Maputo, then known as Lourenço Marques, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique. Her father was employed by the railways and her mother was a market vendor. As a young girl she excelled in football. She played with boys, as there were no leagues or teams for girls. At only 14 years of age, she was encouraged to take up athletics by one of Mozambique's foremost literary figures, the

Dato' Sri Siti Nurhaliza binti Tarudin (Jawi: سيتي نورهاليزا بنت تارودين ; IPA: [ˈsiti nʊrhaˈliza ˈbinti taˈrudɪn]; born 11 January 1979) is a Malaysian singer and businesswoman. To date, she has garnered almost 300 local and international awards. She made her debut after she won a popular local singing competition show Bintang HMI in 1995 when she was only 16. Her debut single, "Jerat Percintaan", won the 11th Anugerah Juara Lagu and another two awards for Best Performance and Best Ballad. The album itself as of 2005, has been sold to a total of more than 800,000 units in Malaysia alone. In her career, she has recorded and sung in multiple languages, including Malaysian, Javanese, English, Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu, and Japanese.Throughout her career, Siti has received an unprecedented number of music awards in Malaysia and its neighbouring countries: 42 Anugerah Industri Muzik, 25 Anugerah Bintang Popular, 27 Anugerah Planet Muzik, 20 Anugerah Juara Lagu, four MTV Asia Awards, three World Music Awards, two Anugerah Musik Indonesia (Indonesian Music Awards), and two records in the Malaysia Book of Records. Backed with 17 studio albums, she is one of the most popular artists in the Malay Archipelago and Nusantara region - she has been voted for Regional Most Popular Artiste ten times in a row beating other fellow artists from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore in the Anugerah Planet Muzik since 2001. Currently, she has been listed as one of Malaysia's richest, most-influential, most award-winning, and most single-produced artist. She is also one of Malaysia's best selling artists, for instance, her album sales alone contributed to 10 percent of Malaysia's total album sales in 2001. To date, she has sold more than 6 million in record sales. At international stage, Siti has won the Gold Award in Asia New Singer Competition at Shanghai Asia Music Festival in 1999, two awards from 'South Pacific International Song and Singing Competition 1999' held in Gold Coast, Queens

The athlete of the week is Frankie Fredericks: the handsome, good-looking, strong, fast, and powerful brother from Namibia.  Yep that’s right, Frankie Fredericks is one of those athletes I loved watching in the 1990s.  Always consistent, always strong, and everpresent, Frankie Fredericks was a force to reckon with.  How many silver medals has he gotten while contending the 100 m and 200 m at the Olympics?  4 Silver medals!  That’s right, an African with 4 silver olympic medals!  He has also won several gold medals at the World Championships, World Indoor Championships, All-Africa Games, and Commonwealth Games.  He is thus far Namibia’s only olympic medalist.

Born in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, Frankie began running at the age of 13, and particularly loved football (soccer for Americans).  However, when he was awarded a scholarship to attend Brigham Young University, in the USA in 1987, he quickly moved his passion to track and field.  In 1991, as Namibia gained independence from South Africa, Frankie started officially compete for his country.  At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Frankie Fredericks won 2 silver medals in 100 m and 200m, giving Namibia its very first olympic medal.  In 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, Frankie again won 2 silver medals coming 2nd to Donovan Bailey in the 100m, and 2nd to Michael Johnson in the 200 m.  Due to injuries, Frankie was absent at Sydney Olympics in 2000, and Namibia dearly missed him there.  He raced the 200m at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and came out 4th, and finally retired at the end of that year at the age of 37 (Imagine a 37 year-old sprinter coming 4th at the olympics, running against young folks like Shawn Crawford, Justin Gatlin, and Bernard Williams).  At the beginning of that run in Athens, Frankie was given a standing ovation that lasted few minutes, and at the end, he said “It is quite emotional, … I always wanted to go out with a medal, but sometimes in life you