Steve Spence
Steve Spence (actually Steven Anthony Spence, born May 9, 1962 in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania ) is a former American long-distance runner, who had his greatest success in the marathon.
After successes in road races in the 1980s, he moved to the beginning of the next decade at the marathon distance. In 1990 he was the winner of the Columbus Marathon U.S. champion with a time of 2:12:17 hours and qualified for the IAAF World Championships in Tokyo.
With a specially tailored to the expected heat race training, he succeeded there, meeting closer to space 25 at the half way mark to 37 km to the leading group. At temperatures of about 32 ° C, he eventually won the bronze medal in 2:15:36.
The following year, he won the U.S. elimination race for the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 2:12:43. At the Olympic marathon, he was twelfth in 2:15:21.
After failed to qualify for the Olympic Games in 1996, he withdrew from the high-performance sports.
Steve Spence is married and has four children. Since 1997, he has athletics coach at Shippensburg University, where he completed in 1985 a degree in Business Administration and then worked as a volunteer coach. His eldest daughter Neely (* 1990) is also long-distance runner and 2009 was U.S. junior champion in cross-country running.