Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey Tuesday smashed the women’s 10,000 metres world record on Tuesday, on the same track where Dutch runner Sifan Hassan had set the previous record just two days ago.
Letesenbet Gidey, who last October broke the 5000m world record, clocked 29:01.03 at the Ethiopian Olympic Trials in the Netherlands. She took 5.79 seconds off Hassan’s record from Sunday.
Sifan Hassan brought the record down 10.63 seconds from Ethiopian Almaz Ayana‘s winning time at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
In total, 30.75 seconds have been taken off the world record starting with Ayana in Rio. Before that, the mark of 29:31.78 set by dubious Chinese runner Wang Junxia had stood since 1993, and nobody else had run within 22 seconds of it.
In 2019, Letesenbet took the 10,000m silver at the world championships. In 2020, she took 4.5 seconds off Tiruneh Dibaba’s 12-year-old 5000m world record.
In the final lap, Gidey navigated lapped runners to sprint home and stop the clock at 29:01.03.
“I expected to run a world record,” said Gidey.”I’d like to try to break the world record again and break 29 minutes,” she added.
MG/abj/APA