Derartu Tulu
Derartu Tulu is the first African female athlete that won two gold medals in the Olympic Games. She was born at the village Bokoji of central Ethiopia in 1969. She was the seventh child of a family with 10 children. Even though, from a very young age she excelled in sports, since he even managed to overcome a boy schoolmate at the 400 metres race, she realized that she had potential in races when she was 16 years old. At 17 she was offered a post at the police force of Ethiopia.
She won her first bronze medal in national games in 1988, in the 1500 metres race. Regarding Olympic Games, she won the gold medal, when she was 23 years old, during the 1992 Olympiad in Barcelona, at the 10,000 metres race. This distinction and the gold medal of Hassiba Boulmerka in the same organization were the first gold medals won by African athletes. Tulu's medal was the first won by a black African female athlete. In Atlanta in 1996 she didn't won any medal, since she finished fourth. However, in Sidney 2000 she won her second gold medal -an achievement no African female race athlete had ever done before. During the Athens Olympic Games she won the bronze medal at the 10,000 metres race.
During her career she has won 35 gold, 12 silver and 15 bronze medals.