Mehmet Terzi | |
Nationality: | Turkish |
Sport: | Running |
Event: | Marathon, road running |
Birth Date: | 5 May 1955 |
Birth Place: | Kurtköy, Bilecik Province, Turkey |
Residence: | Eskişehir, Turkey |
Pb: | 2:10:25 London, 1987 marathon |
Mehmet Terzi (born 5 May 1955) is a medal-winning former long-distance runner from Turkey, who specialized in running marathons. He served as the president of the Turkish Athletic Federation (Turkish: Türkiye Atletizm Federasyonu) (TAF) for nine years between 2004 and 2013.
Terzi was born on 5 May 1955, at Kurtköy in Bilecik Province, mid-western Turkey. He competed in the 1500m, 5000m, 10000m and cross-country events in various clubs in Eskişehir, Mersin, Ankara, Bursa, Zonguldak and Istanbul after entering athletics in 1970 in Eskişehir.[1] He was a member of Fenerbahçe SK.[2]
Mehmet Terzi won a bronze medal at the 1979 Mediterranean Games in Split, Yugoslavia; and clinched the marathon gold medal at the 1983 Mediterranean Games in Casablanca, Morocco. He also won the Istanbul Marathon in 1985 and the San Francisco Marathon in 1987; after receiving silver medals in the 1978 Paris, France, and 1983 Frankfurt, Germany, marathons.[1]
He competed for Turkey in marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympics, but did not achieve a top rank.[1]
In 2004, Mehmet Terzi was elected president of the Turkish Athletic Federation for a term of four years. He was re-elected for the same post for another four-year term in 2008. He won his third consecutive election in 2012, but was forced to resign after a high-profile doping scandal in Turkish athletics during the summer of 2013. Terzi resigned from the TAF Presidency on 1 August 2013, just before the World Championships in Moscow.[1]