The Telegraph

The winner of the women’s 10,000m run at the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin was an Israeli athlete with Kenyan roots whose husband encouraged her to take up professional running.

Lonah Salpeter will be one of the stars of Tata Steel Kolkata 25K, partnered by The Telegraph, on December 15 this year.

Over 15,000 people are expected to participate in the sixth edition of Calcutta’s biggest race.

Salpeter’s early years were spent in a village in west Kenya that had no electricity or running water. She was a good student and got a job at the home of the Kenyan ambassador to Israel. She started running after arriving in Israel in 2008 just to keep fit.

In 2011, she met the Israeli international runner Dan Salpeter. They fell in love and got married in 2014.

Dan, her husband-cum-coach, saw her potential as a runner and by 2013 she was winning national titles.

Salpeter, who will celebrate her 31st birthday three days before Calcutta’s premiere road race, comes as the reigning European 10,000m champion after having won her title on the track in Berlin last year.

She has gradually been changing her focus to the roads in recent years and won the Prague Marathon in May.

Salpeter went to the World Athletics Championships two months ago and was among the medal favourites, but she collapsed midway on the track and couldn’t finish the race. She recovered quickly, however, and finished fourth in the Frankfurt Marathon last month.

Salpeter is tipped to challenge the TSK women’s course record of 1:26:01 set by Ethiopia’s Degitu Azimeraw in 2017, said an official of Procam International, the organisers of the race.

Tanzania’s Failuna Matanga, another strong name in the female atheletes’ list, is a familiar face in Calcutta. She had finished third in 2017 and 2018 and would be looking for a higher podium finish this time.

Ethiopians Birke Debele and Guteni Shone have both won international marathons this year, and should also be bidding for podium finish.

At least two in the elite men’s list know what it’s like to stand on the podium at a global championship. Kenya’s Leonard Barsoton is a two-time world cross-country silver medallist, as an under-20 runner in 2013 and then as a senior in 2017.

Ethiopia’s Tariku Bekele took the 10,000m bronze at the London 2012 Olympic Games. He is a brother of Kenenisa Bekele, the distance-running icon who set a course record of 1:13:48 in TSK Kolkata 25K two years ago.