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Barcelona Welcomes Back 1992 Olympic Marathon Medalists

(l to r) Koichi Morishita (Japan), Yuko Arimori (Japan), Valentina Yegorova (Russia), Young-cho Hwang (South Korea), Lorraine Moller (New Zealand) and Stephan Freigang (Germany)

In the 25th anniversary year of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the organizers of the Zurich Barcelona Marathon invited all six marathon medalists back as guests of honor for Sunday's race.  JRN travelled to Barcelona with men's gold medalist Young-cho Hwang (South Korea), men's silver medalist Koichi Morishita (Japan) and women's silver medalist Yuko Arimori (Japan).

Bronze medalist Moller, gold medalist Yegorova, and silver medalist Arimori in the Olympic Stadium.
Gold medalist Hwang, silver medalist Morishita and bronze medalist Freigang at the Hwang monument in front of the Olympic Stadium.

Yegorova and Arimori watch themselves battle to gold and silver 25 years removed.

Hwang reflects on becoming one of his country's legends.

The six medalists reunited, Hwang with son Yuchan. All six will run Saturday's Breakfast Run over the final 4 km of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics marathon course, the climb up Montjuic. Freigang is the only one of the six who will also run Sunday's Zurich Barcelona Marathon.


Japan's last men's Olympic marathon medalist and first women's Olympic marathon medalist, together again in the place where their names entered history.

 all photos © 2017 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

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TokyoRacer said…
That's terrific. Well done, Barcelona Marathon!

And now you know the difference between Western women and Japanese women as they age.
March 10, 2017 at 9:53 PM
Metts said…
I also see how much the guys have put on some weight. The reason I keep going.
March 11, 2017 at 2:42 PM
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