Adriana Nelson is a professional runner who is based in Florida. She is an Olympic silver medallist in the women’s marathon and has been described by some as the best all round athlete at both the high school and college level. She also has done professional running in Italy and Dubai but ultimately became a US national. Since turning professional Nelson has travelled the world coaching and training other athletes and has also been a commentator on TBS’s America’s Next Top Model.
As is often the case with professional athletes, Adriana Nelson is no ordinary person. She began her athletics at an early age of six in the country of Romania, where she excelled at tennis, bowling and the swimming pool. However, at the age of 14 she was already performing all of the above plus many additional sports in order to keep up with the rapidly increasing weight levels required of her to compete in the country’s competitive swimming events. This included regular participation in the swimming pool in the local gym. When this was not sufficient, she began to train in Europe before joining up with the American national rowing team, which sent her to the University of Texas for a four year degree in Exercise Science.
Once at the University of Texas Adriana was called up into the national rowing team, which was led by eventual gold medal winner Desiree Laue. The main difference between this and most national teams is that the US squad generally consist of mostly men whereas the Romanian squad is almost entirely women. After a few years when it came to a selection process for the Olympics, Nelson was eventually chosen as one of two runners to represent the United States in the relay events. Her first race in the Olympic field saw her win the gold medal behind Laura Massarini who had earlier qualified through a run in the Olympic track trials but eventually lost out to Nelson. After this gold medal win Nelson became known as one of the favorites to win the double, but was unable to repeat her performance which meant that she missed out on the medals that went to France and Russia.