Maria Polyzou stands by the side of the athletes who will compete in the 1st Patras International Half Marathon, she supports them morally and practically, as ambassador of the race! 

Maria Polyzou was born and raised in Patras and is the first Greek woman to compete in a road marathon, in the Olympic Games, in Atlanta in 1996 and one of the most important marathon runners internationally. She was champion for twenty consecutive years and holder of the Greek record, in the marathon road, a record that is still maintained today 2:33:40. She hasaccomplished  the best Greek performance in the original Marathon-Athens route with a time of 2:39:10 since the 1997 World Championships, where she also she ranked 12th 

She won the First Balkan Gold Medal in a Road Marathon, setting a Balkan Record while running in Istanbul in 1990. She broke 14 Panhellenic Records, at various distances. In July 2010 she achieved the Phidippian feat. On the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon, she ran the distance from Athens to Sparta, has a short break to rest for only an hour, and ran again all the way back.

She is an Ambassador of the Marathon Road, Ambassador of ELYZA for abused children, Ambassador of Europa Donna Greece and supports social awarenes against violence. She is a member of the Women’s Committee of AIMS (World Road Marathon Federation) for the development of the running movement in the world. She was the Director of the Marathon Road Museum. She is a graduate student of the TEFAA of the Kapodistrian University of Athens, a long-distance athletics coach and the author of the books “Soul and Body” and “Don’t Give Up”, while she inspired the children’s book writer Magda Kostopoulou-Beriou to write the fairy tale “A giant they called M.P.”