Lonah Korlima Chemtai Salpeter (Hebrew: לונה צ'מטאי-סלפטר, née Chemtai, born 12 December 1988) is an Israeli Olympic runner. Born in Kenya, she represents Israel internationally. She won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. At the European Athletics Championships in the 10,000 metres, Salpeter won the gold medal in 2018, and earned a bronze medal in 2022. She won the 2020 Tokyo Marathon, won the silver medal at the 2022 New York City Marathon, and finished third at the 2023 Boston Marathon.
Her personal best time for the marathon is 2:17:45, which Salpeter ran in 2020 and which made her the sixth-fastest female marathon runner in history (currently, she is the 11th), and set a new Israeli national record. Salpeter represented Israel at the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. As of November 2022, she held six Israeli national records, over distances ranging from 3000 metres to the marathon.
Salpeter represented Israel at the 2024 Paris Olympics in the Women's marathon on 11 August 2024, and finished 8th.
Lonah Chemtai was born and raised in the small village of Kapkanyar, in West Pokot County, in the Rift Valley Province in western Kenya, a member of the Pokot tribe of the Kalenjin people. The members of the tribe speak the Pokot language and Swahili, are warriors, and do not like running—despite being good runners. She grew up living in a dwelling made of sheet metal, without electricity or running water. She has 12 siblings, and the members of the family had to walk down to a nearby river to fetch their water. Her school was four kilometers (2.5 miles) away from her home. In 2005, her father died, at 55 years of age, and Lonah helped her mother by tilling the land of the family farm, milking cows, cooking, washing, and fetching water from the river.
She came to Israel in December 2008 at 20 years of age, having never left her village previously, to work as a live-in nanny for the three children under five years of age of Kenya's Ambassador to Israel. The Ambassador's wife was initially away studying in Australia, but returned to the family in 2010. She lived and worked in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
She met Israeli running coach Dan Salpeter in 2011, when he was a university student. The two married in 2014, and she became pregnant later that year. The couple's son, Roy, was born in December 2014. The family resided in moshav Yanuv, in central Israel, and then in Shoham, also in central Israel.
She received support in her quest for Israeli citizenship from Kenya's Ambassador to Israel, Augostino Njoroge. He said that Kenya had plenty of marathon runners, and that he would be happy to have Salpeter run for Israel: "Kenya and Israel are so good friends. We cannot hand you the medal, but we can give you somebody who can bring the medal. This is what good friends are there for."
Shortly after, in March 2016, Salpeter became an Israeli citizen on account of her being married to an Israeli citizen, eight years after she began residing in Israel, and a few days before the cut-off to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The family now lives in Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan in northern Israel.
She began running in a local park in Herzliya as a hobby in 2010. She said: "When I started seeing people running in [Tel Aviv], I said to myself ‘I can be like them.’ Then I met my husband, and he was encouraging me and supporting me a lot."
Her husband, an Israeli former middle-distance and mountain runner, is also her coach. They met as she was casually running in a park. In her youth she ran shorter distances, and she only began running marathons after 2014. She says that runners face the challenge of learning how to handle pain, and she adds: "And losing. You train for months, and you are disappointed, but you need to take a challenge. You need to know where your weaknesses were, and the mistakes that you made."
Her club is Maccabi Tel Aviv. Salpeter trains 190-200 kilometers (118–124 miles) a week. She does not listen to music as she runs, saying "I always like to listen to my heart beating. Even though I'm running 42 kilometers, I run without music." Salpeter also revealed that "In a marathon I don't look at who I passed or who is passing me. I have a goal and I only see it." She said: "People tell me, ‘You inspire us, you make us proud,’ so that really motivates me a lot. I want to inspire the younger generation in Israel."
2016–17; Tel Aviv Marathon gold and 2016 Olympics
Salpeter came in first among the women in the 2016 Tel Aviv Marathon in 2:40:16, almost five minutes below the qualification time for the 2016 Rio Olympics. It was the first time she had run a marathon.
Salpeter then competed for Israel at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the marathon. By the 30th kilometer, her time put her in the top half of the runners, ranking her approximately 90th. She left the race at the 35th kilometer, with sharp pain in her chest. On the advicae of officials in Brazil who thought that the baby might get sick, she had not brought her baby with her to Rio de Janeiro, and had stopped nursing it a few weeks before the race, resulting in her having extra breast milk and consequently problems with her chest. She explained on Facebook: Unfortunately, I was forced to stop by a shoulder problem. As you all know, I'm still nursing my 20-month-old son. During my training in Kenya, I tried to stop, but it caused me pain and a shoulder problem due to running with breasts full of milk. This limited me in the European championships in Amsterdam (a half-marathon) and happened again today. I promise to attain respectable achievements in the future and am going forward with head held high.
In September 2016 Salpeter came in 11th in the 2016 Berlin Marathon in Germany, in 2:40:16.
In May 2017 she won the Berlin BIG 25 km race in Germany, in 1:28:48.
In June 2017, Salpeter won a silver medal in the 2017 European Athletics Team Championships Second League 5,000 metre race in Tel Aviv, Israel, as she ran a 16:19.90.
In August 2017, in the 2017 London World Championship Marathon, Salpeter ran a 2:40, coming in 41st.