Gidey and Cheptegei conspire to produce an unprecedented evening of athletics

Yet again, a season unlike any other has produced an unparalleled evening of athletics.

Two venerable world records were shattered within the span of less than 50 minutes last night, illustrating once again how the Coronavirus pandemic that upended much of the world in 2020 hasn’t fazed the determination of many of the world’s finest athletes.

Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia came first, producing a stunning 5000m run of 14:06.62 to smash the previous mark by more than four seconds. A few minutes after the 22-year-old’s sensational performance, Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei took his turn, covering 25 laps of the track in 26:11.00 to better the previous 10,000m world record by more than six seconds. The records for those two events had never been broken on the same day.

The setting? A two-race meeting aptly named the NN Valencia World Record Day at the Spanish city’s intimate Turia Stadium before a crowd limited to less than 150 due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

The scene was in stark contrast to those in Oslo, on 6 June 2008, when Tirunesh Dibaba took command of the world 5000m record with a 14:11.15 run and three years earlier, in Brussels on 26 August 2005, when Kenenisa Bekele clocked 26:17.53 to clip 2.57 seconds from his own year-old mark. The roar of capacity crowds at the events, both fixtures of the Golden League series, were crucial in those record assaults. In Brussels, the pulsating beat provided by an African expat drum orchestra added to the thunder produced by the crowd of 47,000 that packed the King Baudouin Stadium.

That was absent in Valencia, but it didn’t seem to matter to either Gidey or Cheptegei whose phenomenal form and singular focus landed both in the record books. For Cheptegei, whose performance came 54 days after he broke the world 5000m record in Monaco, where attendance was also restricted, the circumstances of the setting wasn’t anything new.

“I wanted to show the sports lovers of the world that the track is exciting,“ said the 24-year-old, who became the 10th man to hold the 5000m and 10,000m world record concurrently.

Alluding to the coronavirus pandemic, Cheptegei added, „In this difficult situation, I hope things like this can still give us joy and some hope for tomorrow.“

He’ll now resume his preparations for the World Athletics Half Marathon Championships Gdynia 2020 on 17 October where he will make his eagerly anticipated debut over the distance. He’ll also arrive in the Polish city unbeaten in three appearances this year – each victory fueled by a world record performance.

Gidey meanwhile, arrived in Valencia with just one race on her CV this season, a solid 14:26.57 run in Monaco, but with form suggesting that she could run significantly faster.

Unlike Cheptegei, who made no secret about his planned assault on the record, Gidey opted for a more understated approach in the lead-in to the meeting, choosing to play down pre-race talk of her attack on Dibaba’s mark. But her ambitions became evident when she passed the 3000-metre point nearly seven seconds ahead of world record pace.

“I have been dreaming about this (setting a world record) for six years,” said Gidey, who hadn’t won a 5000m race since 2016. „I am very happy now.“

Race report

Profile

Letesenbet Gidey
Born: 20 March 1998. Coach: Haile Eyasu.

Gidey may have harboured her world record dreams for more than half a decade, but early in her career, she was a very reluctant competitor. So much so that in 2011 she was expelled from school for refusing to run in physical education classes.

“I really did not like racing,” she said, recalling her 13-year-old self. “I brought my parents to school to talk to the headmaster with the hope of getting reinstated. He agreed to reinstate me only if I ran for the school. I reluctantly agreed, just for the chance to get back to school.”

That headmaster deserves at least a modicum of credit for the career trajectory of Ethiopia’s latest distance running star because if any reluctance remained, Gidey hid it well.

Born in Endameskel in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, Gidey – the fourth child in a family of two brothers and two sisters – grew up on her family’s farm looking to initially pursue academic interests. But after getting drawn to the sport in an unorthodox fashion, she knew that it could be her calling in life after competing in a regional race some four years ago.

“I ran a 3000m race representing my Woreda [district] and finished second at the All-Tigray Games,” she recalls. “It was this performance that convinced me that I may have a future in athletics.”

But it wasn’t an entirely happy introduction to the sport. Earl on, Gidey struggled for consistency when competing in her region, sometimes even getting lapped in races.

“I remember finishing 44th in my first cross country race [the junior women’s race at the Jan Meda national championships] in 2012,” she says. “That really did not feel good at all.”

But she stuck with it. In late 2012, Gidey won a 3000m/2000m steeplechase double for the Tigray region at the Ethiopian Schools Championships in Shashemane. That captured the attention of club scouts. A few weeks later, she joined the Trans sport club and moved to Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. She then spent the next two years working her way into the national ranks which led to her first global breakthrough.

In 2015 Gidey led an Ethiopian podium sweep in the U20 race at the World Cross Country Championships, a title she defended in Kampala two years later. She performed admirably on the track in her international debut, finishing fourth in the 3000m at the 2015 World U18 Championships.

Her steady rise continued. In 2018, her first season in the senior ranks, she improved to 8:30.96 and 14:23.14 in the 3000m and 5000m, respectively. The latter remained her lifetime best until her record run in Valencia.

The following year witnessed a return to the global spotlight. In March she raced to bronze at the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus and improved by a spot in Doha where she took 10,000m silver at the World Championships. She then capped the year with a 44:20 world best over 15km at the Seven Hills Run in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Her performance in Valencia, at just 22, suggests that a further assault on the event’s 14-minute barrier is well within Gidey’s reach.

Stats

Personal bests:
1500m: 4:11.11 (2017)
3000m: 8:20.27 (2019) Area record
5000m: 14:06.62 (2020) WR (pending)
10,000m: 30:21.23 (2019)
10km: 33:55 (2019)
15km: 44:20 (2019) World best

World record progression 5000m:
14:48.07 Zola Budd (GBR) 1985
14:37.33 Ingrid Kristiansen (NOR) 1986
14:36.45 Fernanda Ribeiro (POR) 1995
14:31.27 Dong Yanmei (CHN) 1997
14:28.09 Bo Jiang (CHN) 1997
14:24.68 Elvan Abeylegesse (TUR) 2004
14:24.53 Meseret Defar (ETH) 2006
14:16.63 Meseret Defar (ETH) 2007
14:11.15 Tirunesh Dibaba (ETH) 2008
14:06.62 Letesenbet Gidey (ETH) 2020

World all-time 5000m list
14:06.62 Letesenbet Gidey (ETH) Valencia 2020
14:11.15 Tirunesh Dibaba (ETH) Oslo 2008
14:12.59 Almaz Ayana (ETH) Rome 2016
14:12.88 Meseret Defar (ETH) Stockholm 2008
14:15.41 Genzebe Dibaba (ETH) Paris 2015
14:18.37 Hellen Obiri (KEN) Rome 2017
14:20.68 Agnes Tirop (KEN) London 2019
14:20.87 Vivian Cheruiyot (KEN) Stockholm 2011
14:22.12 Sifan Hassan (NED) London 2019
14:23.33 Senbere Teferi (ETH) Rabat 2018

Profile

Joshua Cheptegei
Born: 12 September 1996. Coach: Addy Ruiter.

After his record-breaking exploits in 2020, much has been written this year about Ugandan star Joshua Cheptegei, whose star has risen to unprecedented heights since his international debut in the U20 race at the 2014 African Cross Country Championships on home soil in Kampala. He finished a distant seventh there, 42 seconds behind the winner.

Joshua Cheptegei – 2019 World Outdoor Championships – Doha, Qatar Sept27-Oct 06, 2019 – Photo: Jiro Mochizuki@PhotoRun Victah1111@aol.com

But his successful follow-up soon after, a victory at the World University Cross Country Championships, which were held in nearby Entebbe, captured the attention of Dutch manager Jurrie van der Velden, who brought Cheptegei to race Geoffrey Kamworor at the TCS World 10K in Bangalore in May that year. Cheptegei finished second to Kamworor, who just seven weeks prior had won the world half marathon title. “We realised then he was special,” says Van der Velden.

Later that year Cheptegei took gold over 10,000m at the World U20 Championships in Eugene, and eight months later he won the African U20 title over the same distance. But his ascent to the top of his sport at senior level would take time.

In 2015 he moved to Kaptagat, Kenya, to train with the best, running daily with Kamworor and greats like Eliud Kipchoge under the guidance of coach Patrick Sang. His running went from strength to strength, and he finished ninth in the 10,000m on his senior championships debut at the World Championships in Beijing that year, but he missed his family and his home too much to ever truly stick it out. Later that year he returned to Uganda, with his manager working to build a group around him under the guidance of Dutch coach Addy Ruiter.

His improvement continued and in his first year as a senior athlete he finished eighth in the 5000m and sixth in the 10,000m at the Olympic Games. He also impressed on the roads, winning prestigious races such as the Carlsbad 5000 and the Zevenheuvelenloop.

Ahead of the World Cross Country Championships in Kampala at the start of 2017, both Ruiter and Cheptegei felt confident that he would deliver gold for Uganda. For much of the race he looked to be on course for gold as he built a huge lead, but then the wheels came off in spectacular fashion, Cheptegei’s body shutting down in hot and humid conditions as he jogged across the line in 30th place.

The experience had a profound effect on Cheptegei and he was reluctant to leave his house for weeks afterwards. Once he overcame the disappointment, his memories of the event helped to fuel his motivation for his next championship appearances.

Little more than four months later at the World Championships in London, there were no such problems. It was a cool, breezy night in the Olympic Stadium, and though the 60,000 fans who packed the stands expected victory to be virtually handed to Mo Farah, Cheptegei had other ideas.

Cheptegei and his Ugandan teammates, together with the Kenyan contingent, unleashed a stop-start series of surges, trying their best to break Farah in his final 10,000m on the track. The Briton eventually seized command with two laps to run and held everyone off to take gold in 26:49.51. Charging down the outside, meanwhile, was Cheptegei to take the silver medal.

It capped a rollercoaster journey over the previous four months, one which included the birth of his son just five weeks prior to the World Championships.

A knee injury cut short his 2018 campaign, but he still managed to win the 5000m and 10,000m double at the Commonwealth Games earlier in the year. He returned to full fitness towards the end of the year and put together a string of victories in international road races, setting a world 15km best of 41:05 in Nijmegen.

Cheptegei used that momentum as he headed into the cross-country season at the start of 2019, and he returned to the World Cross Country a far stronger athlete – mentally and physically. Cheptegei was one of the few elite athletes to travel to Aarhus long before the event, so on the weekend itself nothing about its absurdly steep inclines took him by surprise.

Cheptegei came home four seconds clear of compatriot Jacob Kiplimo to strike gold, becoming the first Ugandan man to win a senior global title in athletics.

Later that year he competed sparingly on the track but showed an impressive turn of speed to defeat a quality field over two miles in Stanford. Two months later, he won the Diamond League title over 5000m in his final tune-up before the World Championships.

In Doha he again exhibited astute racing smarts at the World Championships, expending his energies with expert precision to out-gun Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha and Kenya’s Rhonex Kipruto and win 10,000m gold in 26:48.36, having covered the last lap in 55.39.

His work for the year wasn’t quite done, though, and he ended his momentous 2019 campaign with a world 10km record of 26:38 in Valencia.

Cheptegei started 2020 where he left off and scorched to a world 5km record of 12:51 in Monaco. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, he had planned to make his 13.1-mile debut at the World Athletics Half Marathon Championships in Gdynia before turning his attention to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

But once major events were hit by postponements and cancellations, Cheptegei started to focus on a new target: breaking the world 5000m record. And he achieved that goal in his first track race of the year, clocking a stunning 12:35.36 at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Monaco.

Less than two months later, he claimed the world record in the 10,000m to further cement his status among the all-time greats.

Stats

Personal bests
1500m: 3:37.82 (2016)
3000m: 7:33.26 (2019)
Two miles: 8:07.54 (2019) NR
5000m: 12:35.36 (2020) WR
10,000m: 226:11.00 (2020) WR
5km: 12:51 (2020) WR
10km: 26:38 (2019) NR
15km: 41:05 (2018) WB
10M: 45:15 (2018) NR

World record progression 10,000m:
26:58.38 Yobes Ondieki (KEN) 1993
26:52.23 William Sigei (KEN) 1994
26:43.53 Haile Gebrselassie (ETH) 1995
26:38.08 Salah Hissou (MAR) 1996
26:31.32 Haile Gebrselassie (ETH) 1997
26:27.85 Paul Tergat (KEN) 1997
26:22.75 Haile Gebrselassie (ETH) 1998
26:20.31 Kenenisa Bekele (ETH) 2004
26:17.53 Kenenisa Bekele (ETH) 2005
26:11.00 Joshua Cheptegei (UGA) 2020

World all-time 10,000m list
26:11.00 Joshua Cheptegei (UGA) Valencia 2020
26:17.53 Kenenisa Bekele (ETH) Brussels 2005
26:22.75 Haile Gebrselassis (ETH) Hengelo 1999
26:27.85 Paul Tergat (KEN) Brussels 1997
26:30.03 Nicholas Kemboi (KEN) Brussels 2003
26:30.74 Abebe Dinkesa (ETH) Hengelo 2005
26:35.63 Micah Kemboi Kogo (KEN) Brussels 2006
26:36.26 Paul Koech (KEN) Brussels 1997
26:37.25 Zersenay Tadese (ERI) Brussels 2006
26:38.08 Salah Hissou (MAR) Brussels 1996

World Athletics