NEW ROCHELLE, NY — A third former member of the Iona College cross country / track & field program competes in the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in the athletics portion of the event. Former Gael standout Anna Holm Baumeister (née Jørgensen) represents Denmark in the women’s marathon event this Sunday (Aug. 14).
Starting and finishing at the famous Sambódromo, a parade area built for the Rio Carnival, the event kicks off Aug. 14 at 9:30 am ET. Coverage of the event will be aired live on NBC and via livestream on NBCOlympics.com.
Baumeister qualified for the event with a personal best marathon time of 2:34.28 at the Frankfurt Marathon on Oct. 25, 2015 in Germany. She was the first Dane and 13th finisher overall at the event. It was a five-minute improvement on her previous career best in same race in 2014 (2:39:13).
While the United States has 129 athletes competing in track & field at the 2016 Olympic Games, Denmark (population 5.6 million) has just eight. Baumeister and teammate Jessica Draskau-Petersson represent the Scandinavian country in Rio.
Baumeister made an impact during her one season at Iona during the 2009-10 school year after graduating from Roskilde Universitet in Roskilde, Denmark. She was the 2009 MAAC cross country champion, winning the event by nearly 11 seconds and helping to lead the Gaels to their then fifth-straight MAAC team title. Baumeister was third at the 2009 NCAA Northeast Regional Cross Country Championship, less than a second behind the race runner up and earned an individual to the NCAA Championship. The Gaels finished fourth in 2009 at regionals; their third-highest team finish to date. She continued her success on the indoor track winning two more MAAC Championships in the 5,000-meter and distance medley relay events. At the MAAC outdoor championship Baumeister was a combined .28 seconds from winning two additional titles. In she was one-hundredth of a second behind teammate Marion Joly-Testault in the 5k event and 28-hundredths behind Samantha Tibbitts in the 10k. Baumeister went on to compete in the first round of the NCAA 10k event in Greensboro later that month.
Baumeister is married to former Iona runner, Thorston Baumeister.
Baumeister joins the United States’ Leonard Korir and Germany’s Maya Rehberg as former Gaels competing in Rio 2016. Korir and Rehberg compete Saturday (Aug. 13) in the men’s 10k (8:25 pm ET) and the women’s 3k steeplechase (9:05 am ET) respectively.