Career
During the greater part of this period she was most successful at the longer distance. The variety of the twenty-three national titles she obtained during her long carrier clearly shows to what extent Beurskens dominated all aspects of the métier: three titles on indoorand five on outdoor tracks, nine on the road and six in the cross country. At the long distances she is by far the most successful Dutch female athlete ever.
Carla Beurskens did not very often represent her native country in major international tournaments.
She took part in the Summer Olympics twice: in Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988, three times in European and one time in World Championships. Foreign various reasons she never performed particularly well at those events.
And this although shortly after her first victory in 1984 she declared that in the future she would ignore Rotterdam, unless the circumstances for female competitors would improve drastically. Moreover, she became the first female in Rotterdam to realise a time within two-and-a-half hours: 2:29:47.
This Dutch national record stood for nearly thirteen years.
lieutenant was finally broken on November 2, 2003, by the Dutch Kenyan Lornah Kiplagat at the New York Marathon: 2:23:43. Beurskens was also victorious in the Nagoya marathon in Japan in 1987, finishing in 2:28:27, taking into account the bad weather conditions (some snow showers on the way), in Eindhoven in 1995 and Enschede in 1997, both towns in The Netherlands. Eight out of the ten times she participated in the Honolulu Marathon in Hawaii, she carried off the palm, for the first time in 1985.
A two-week vacation offer came together with the invitation for this event.
In the following years up to 1994 her series of victories was only interrupted in 1988 and 1991. With her eight victories in Hawaii she is the most successful female marathon runner ever.
Nowadays she is invited by the organizers to be present at the event as a guest of honour.