Ronaldo da Costa

Ronaldo da Costa ( born June 7, 1970 in Descoberto, Minas Gerais ) is a Brazilian long distance runner and former world record holder in the marathon.

Da Costa was the youngest of eleven siblings and worked as a welder, cutter and pottery before he was athlete. In the 5000 -meter run, he was in 1993 and 1995 South American champion. In the Ibero-American Championships in 1994 he won gold in the 5000m and silver in the 10,000 m. In the same year he won the bronze medal at the World Half Marathon Championships in Oslo with a time of 1:00:54 h, and won the most famous road race in his country, the Corrida de São Silvestre Internacional. At the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, he retired from the semi-final of the 10,000 -meter run.

In 1997, he was to say in his marathon debut fifth of the Berlin Marathon in 2:09:07 A year later he won just there in 2:06:05 h, breaking the ten -year-old world record of the Ethiopian Belayneh Dinsamo. He was the first person who completed a marathon with an average speed of more than 20 km / h - which is the pace that Emil Zatopek had in his hour run world record of 1951.

Handicapped by injuries, da Costa was never able to return to this achievement.