Valeria Straneo (born 5 April 1976) is an Italian long-distance runner, winner of the silver medal at the 2013 World Championships in Athletics and Italian record holder in the marathon.

[1] Born in Alessandria, it was only after the removal of her spleen, in 2010, that she began to reach a national standard of running.

At 35 years old, she ranked eighth in the 2011 Berlin Marathon with a time of 2:26:33 hours.

This met the qualifying standard for the 2012 Olympic Games, but three other athletes had run faster than her (Anna Incerti, Rosaria Console and Nadia Ejjafini).

[2][3] However, she broke the 12-year-old Italian record at the Rotterdam Marathon in April, finishing as runner-up with a time of 2:23:44 hours.