Named by her sports-mad father after the Olympic Games, Olimpiada Ivanova is a women's 20km race walker who has had some ups and downs on the way to winning a swag of international titles and setting the current world record for the event. She was crowned world champion in both 2001 and 2005 - the latter in Helsinki being where she broke the 20km world record with a time of 1:24.41 - but earlier in her career she earlier tested positive to the steroid stanozolol after winning a silver medal in the 10km walk at the 1997 World Championships and was banned from competition for two years. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Ivanova came within a whisker of adding Olympic gold to her list of titles, but beaten into second place by just 0.04 seconds as Greece's Athanasia Tsoumeleka was spurred on by a hometown crowd to win gold. Ivanova failed to finish the 2007 World Championship 20km walk, but you can be sure she is focused on a Beijing gold medal in 2008.
