Which athlete won the women's 400 metres at the 1980 Moscow Olympics?

Marita Koch won the women's 400 metres at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Koch represented East Germany and won the final in 48.88 seconds. The performance set an Olympic record and made her the first woman to run under 49 seconds in an Olympic 400-metre final.

She had already become one of the era's leading sprinters. Koch later set the women's 400-metre world record of 47.60 seconds in Canberra in 1985, a mark that remains one of the longest-standing records in athletics.

The Moscow final is sometimes confused with the 1980 Olympic 400-metre hurdles, which was won by another East German athlete, Volker Beck in the men's event and Sara Simeoni's era in field events. Koch's race was the flat 400 metres, not the hurdles.