With one of the most versatile performances ever seen by a female athlete at an Olympics Games, she won the bronze medal in the 5,000 metres on August 5, the bronze in the 10,000m on August 9, and a day and a half later took the marathon gold medal. On a very demanding course, she won a dramatic sprint finish against Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa by three seconds – the narrowest margin in any women’s Olympic marathon – and in doing so, became the first athlete to win medals in all three events since Emil Zatopek in Helsinki in 1952. The 31-year-old Dutch athlete was honoured by World Athletics in December, who crowned her the female World Athlete of the Year.
