Meryem Bekmez

Meryem Bekmez
At the 2025 Summer World University Games
Personal information
Born (2000-07-31) 31 July 2000
Diyarbakır, Turkey
Sport
SportRace walk
ClubEnka SK
Medal record
Women's athletics
Representing  Turkey
World Race Walking Team Championships
Bronze medal – third place2018 Taicang10 km race walk (team)
World U20 Championships
Silver medal – second place2018 Tampere10,000 m race walk
European U20 Championships
Gold medal – first place2019 Borås10,000 m race walk
Bronze medal – third place2017 Grosseto10,000 m race walk
European Race Walking Cup
Gold medal – first place2019 Alytus10 km race walk (U20)
World U18 Championships
Silver medal – second place2017 Nairobi5,000 m race walk
European U18 Championships
Gold medal – first place2016 Tbilisi5,000 m race walk
Summer World University Games
Gold medal – first place2021 Chengdu20 km walk

Meryem Bekmez (born 31 July 2000) is a Turkish race walker specialising in the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres.[1] She is a native of Diyarbakır, Turkey. She was a member of the municipality-owned club of Kayapınar,[2] before she was transferred by Enka SK in Istanbul.[3]

Early life

Meryem Bekmez was born in Şilbe neighborhood of Yenişehir district of Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey on 31 July 2000. In 2013, she was discovered for athletics by Çetin Aslan, a coach of the Turkish Athletic Federation when he visited her school. She was a seventh-grade student in the middle school.[2]

Her father Hacı Bekmez told in an interview that "she would have been married off like her sister, or would be working on the field, had she not been discovered".[2] Born and raised in a region where the practice of child marriage for girls is common, she escaped the traditional social pressure thanks to athletics, as she has emphasized.[4]

Sports career

Bekmez placed first in the 3 km event at an intra-school running competition at provincial level. The same year, she ranked first in a nationwide competition. Following her success in provincial and then in regional events, she was allowed to participate at the Turkish championships.[2]

After she came runner-up in the 2014 Turkish Championships, she was admitted to the national team's preparation camp. In 2015, she became Turkish champion. Her international debut came at the Balkan Athletics Championships in 2016, where she became champion.[2][5]

In 2016, Bekmez became champion in the 5,000m race walk event at the 2016 European Athletics Youth Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia,[6] and broke the 12-year national record.[7]

She competed in the 5,000m race walk at the 2017 World U18 Championships winning a silver medal.[2] She also competed in the 10,000m race walk at the 2017 European U20 Championships winning a bronze medal.[8]

Bekmez and her teammate Ayşe Tekdal of the Turkey national race walking team won the bronze medal at the 2018 IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships in Taicang, China.[9] At the 2018 IAAF World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, she took the silver medal,[10] and broke national records in junior and senior women's category with a time of 44:17.69.[3] She set a national record and became World U20 leader in the 20 km walk event of the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany although she placed only 11th.[11]

During the first leg of the Turkish Race Walk League held in Konya in April 2019, she set a national record in the 5,000m event of women's U20 category with her time of 21:54.[12] She won the gold medal in juniors (U20) category of the 2019 European Race Walking Cup#Women's 10 km (U20) in Alytus, Lithuania.[13] At the 2019 European Athletics U20 Championships held in Borås, Sweden, she captured the gold medal in the 10,000m race walk event.[14]

Bekmez competed in the women's 20 km walk at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, finishing 21st in 1:35:08.[15] In early 2021 she set new personal bests across several distances within a few months of each other, walking 21:05.56 for 5000 metres on 17 January, 43:23 for 10 km on 6 March and 1:28:48 for 20 km on 27 March, all Turkish records.[16] She won the gold medal in the women's 20 km walk at the 2021 Summer World University Games, held in Chengdu, China in 2023 after a COVID-19-related postponement, finishing in 1:33:53 ahead of the Czech Republic's Eliška Martínková.

She further improved her 10,000 m track walk national record to 44:11.12 on 10 June 2023.[16] Bekmez returned to the Olympics at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, competing in the women's 20 km walk.[17] She went on to compete for Turkey at the 2025 Summer World University Games in the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany.[18]

Competition record

YearCompetitionVenuePositionEventTimeNotes
Representing  Turkey
2016 Balkan Athletics Championships Pitești, Romania 1st 5,000 m race walk 22.53 [5]
European U18 Championships Tbilisi, Georgia 1st 5,000 m race walk 22:50.22 NR [7]
2017 World U18 Championships Nairobi, Kenya 2nd 5,000 m race walk 22:32.79 [2]
European U20 Championships Grosseto, Italy 3rd 10,000 m race walk 48:33.88 [8]
2018 World Race Walking Team Championships Taicang, China 3rd 10 km race walk (team) 25 pts [9]
World U20 Championship Tampere, Finland 2nd 10,000 m race walk 44:17.69 NR [3][10]
European Championships Berlin, Germany 11th 20 km race walk 1:31:00 WU20L, NR [11]
2019 European Race Walking Cup Alytus, Lithuania 1st 10 km race walk (U20) 45:37 [13]
European U20 Championships Borås, Sweden 1st 10,000 m race walk 44:44.50 [14]
2021 Olympic Games Tokyo, Japan 21st 20 km race walk 1:35:08 [15]
2023 Summer World University Games Chengdu, China 1st 20 km walk 1:33:53
2024 Olympic Games Paris, France 20 km race walk [17]
2025 Summer World University Games Rhine-Ruhr, Germany 20 km walk [18]
  • NR: National record
  • WU20L: World U20 leading

References

  1. ↑ "Meryem Bekmez". IAAF. 22 July 2017. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Aydın, Gülden (3 August 2017). "Athletics saved Turkish girl from marriage at young age". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 "Meryem Bekmez'den Rekorlarla Dünya İkinciliği". Son Dakika (in Turkish). 14 July 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  4. ↑ "Teröre boyun eğmedi, madalyaya yürüdü! Meryem Bekmez..." Sabah (in Turkish). 26 March 2018. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  5. 1 2 "Meryem Bekmez becomes the champion of Balkan". Jin News Agency. 11 April 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  6. ↑ "Bibic leaves his mark in Tbilisi". European Athletics. 15 July 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  7. 1 2 "Meryem ve Evin Madalyaya Yürüdü". BiaNet (in Turkish). 22 July 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  8. 1 2 "Meryem Bekmez". European Athletics. 22 July 2017. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
  9. 1 2 "Yürüyüş Milli Takımı'ndan tarihi madalya". Sabah (in Turkish). 6 May 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  10. 1 2 "Two gold medals for Mexico at World U20 Championships in Finland". Mexico News Daily. 14 July 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  11. 1 2 "Meryem Bekmez 11'inci oldu". Spor X (in Turkish). 11 August 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  12. ↑ "Meryem Bekmez'den Türkiye rekoru". Independent Türkçe (in Turkish). 28 April 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  13. 1 2 "Turkey's Bekmez bags gold medal at European Race Walking Cup". Daily Sabah. 20 May 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  14. 1 2 "Meryem Bekmez'den altın madalya". BirGün (in Turkish). 21 July 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  15. 1 2 "Summer Olympics: Women's 20km Walk results". ESPN. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
  16. 1 2 "Meryem BEKMEZ". World Athletics. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
  17. 1 2 "Paris 2024 Women's 20km Race Walk Results". Olympics.com. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
  18. 1 2 "Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games". Turkish Ministry of Youth and Sports. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.