Manoliu Lia

About

Lia Manoliu, born on April 25, 1932, in Chișinău, was a remarkable all-around athlete who initially excelled in field tennis, table tennis, volleyball, and basketball, being a member of the Știința Bucharest team. At 16, she dedicated herself to athletics, specializing in discus throw, where she became a 12-time national champion and a seven-time Balkan champion. The first athlete in the world to participate in six consecutive Olympic Games (1952-1972), a feat recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, she won the gold medal in 1968 in Mexico City with an Olympic record of 58.28 meters, plus two bronzes in 1960 in Rome and 1964 in Tokyo. After retiring from competitions in 1972, Lia Manoliu held leadership positions in the Romanian Olympic movement, serving as vice-president of the Romanian Olympic Committee between 1973-1990, then as president until 1998. She was a senator for Bucharest in the 1990-1992 legislature on the FSN lists and a member of various international commissions, such as the IOC Olympic Academy Commission, the IAAF Women's Committee, and the Association of European National Olympic Committees. She received distinctions such as the UNESCO Fair Play Award (1974), the Olympic Order in bronze (1975), and the IOC Centenary Trophy (1994), and the National Stadium in Bucharest was named in her honor for her contributions. Concurrently with his sports career, he graduated from the Faculty of Power Engineering at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute in 1954, working as an electrical power engineer at IPROMET Bucharest and graduating from a sports journalism school. The daughter of philosophy professors Alexandrina and Ion Manoliu, she demonstrated an iron will, winning Olympic gold in 1968 despite an elbow injury. She passed away on January 9, 1998, at the age of 65, following a heart attack after surgery for a brain tumor, and was buried at Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest.