Lorraine Moller

During a long and successful international career which spanned almost 25 years Lorraine Moller’s impact on the sport was two-fold.

Initially at the vanguard of a group of pioneering female Kiwi distance runners who conquered the world, during the latter half of her career she defied the sands of time to become an Olympic bronze medallist at the age of 37.

Born the third eldest of six children in the small Waikato town of Putaruru, Lorraine enjoyed an active and happy upbringing with her siblings. However, a virulent and at times life-threatening infection interrupted her childhood and required her to be hospitalised for weeks at a time.

“Those experiences in hospital were lonely and miserable. I looked out the hospital window onto the Auckland Domain and longed to run away,” she says of the illness, which she struggled with through her primary school years.

With the illness cleared, the trajectory of her life was to change after joining the Putaruru ...