The four-time Olympian and Olympic silver medallist also set a race record for the NY Marathon which stood for nine years.
If an aspiring distance runner had powerful ambitions to be a world class marathon runner, where would she go to train and live?
Lisa O’Dea, who grew up in Gawler on the outskirts of Adelaide and had been an emerging 400m hurdler until she accepted a sports scholarship from the University of Oregon in the US.
The University is based in Eugene and is considered the top track city in America. It’s where some of the world’s leading coaches live and coach.
She was coming to the realisation that the success she craved would come in some other form than hurdling. Oregon had two dedicated women’s distance coaches in Tom and Janet Heinonen.
And finally, O’Dea met an equally promising young US distance runner named Ken Martin, who encouraged his soon-to-be-wife to try out for Australia’s marathon team.
She said at the time: “ . . . there wasn’t a 10,000 metres event and I wasn’t fast enough at the 3000. A year before the (1984) Olympics, I had no ambitions at all and wasn’t even thinking of trying to make an Australian team. I certainly had no desire to run a marathon.”
She decided to “give it a bash” and qualified. In Canberra, she ran 2:35:05 and took first place. She ran seventh in the inaugural Olympic Women’s Marathon in LA and her time of 2:29:03 was one of her 11 sub-2:30 races.
In Seoul, Martin remained in contention late into the race as others dropped one-by-one. Finally, it was just she and Rosa Mota, with the Portuguese runner proving just that little bit stronger over the closing stages to win, 2:25:40 to 2:25:53.
It is the closest any Australian has gone to winning an Olympic marathon, though Robert de Castella did win a world championship marathon.
Elsewhere she would set course records in Osaka Japan and in 1992, after three attempts, she devastated the field winning the famous New York Marathon and setting a course record that would stand for nine years.
Martin/Ondieki became known as possibly the world’s most intense, committed marathoner. As a four-time Olympian, Olympic silver medallist, Commonwealth Games champion, NY Marathon winner, London Marathon runner-up, and Australian titleholder, she is considered by respected judges as Australia’s greatest ever marathon runner.
