of medals in the women 's singles event with a gold in 1998 ( when she beat her team-mate Barbara Niedernhuber by 2 thousandths of a second ) , a silver in 2006 , and a bronze in 2002 .
First held in 2011 , the race is also called the , named after Naoko Takahashi , the retired local runner who won the marathon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and broke the marathon world record in 2001 , becoming the first woman to completeolympics.olympic_medal_honordistance in under two hours and twenty minutes .
This was a crucial race for Michael Phelps , because he needed it to completeolympics.olympic_medal_honorgoal of winning eight gold medals in a single Olympic Games , breaking Mark Spitz 's record of seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics .