Živilė Balčiūnaitė (born 3 April 1979 in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

) is a

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

n Marathon runner.

Career

Balčiūnaitė finished 4th at the

2006 European Athletics Championships The 19th European Athletics Championships were held in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 7 August and 13 August 2006. The competition arena was the Ullevi Stadium and the official motto "Catch the Spirit". Gothenburg also hosted the 1995 World Champions ...

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

. She also competed in the same event at the

2004 Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad (), and officially branded as Athens 2004 (), were an international multi-sport event held from 13 to 29 August 2004 in Athens, Greece. The Games saw 10,625 athletes ...

, finishing 14th. She finished 11th at the 2008 Olympics.

Doping bans

In April 2011, the Athletics Federation of Lithuania announced Balčiūnaitė has been banned for two years for a positive drug test and was stripped of her marathon gold medal from the 2010 European Athletics Championships. Balčiūnaitė received an eight year ban in July 2016 by the Athletics Federation of Lithuania after testing positive for meldonium.

Achievements

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Balciunaite, Zivile 1979 births Living people Athletes from Vilnius Lithuanian female long-distance runners Athletes (track and field) at the 2004 Summer Olympics Athletes (track and field) at the 2008 Summer Olympics Olympic athletes for Lithuania Lithuanian sportspeople in doping cases Doping cases in athletics Lithuanian female marathon runners