Olympic Women’s 5,000 Preview: Kipyegon, Tsegay, & Chebet in Battle of the Stars

Whereas the 2024 Paris Olympics will begin with a bang with the lads’s 10,000-meter ultimate on the very first night time of monitor & subject on Friday, the sprints can be within the highlight for the subsequent two nights with the ladies’s 100m ultimate on Saturday and the lads’s 100m ultimate on Sunday. Distance junkies should wait till day 4 — Monday — for the subsequent distance ultimate, the ladies’s 5,000 meters (9:15 p.m. Paris time/3:15 p.m. US Jap Time).

The race must be well worth the wait. As a result of we live within the period of the ladies’s distance freak.

That’s meant as a praise, as a result of freakish is the one option to describe what girls like Religion Kipyegon, Gudaf Tsegay, and Sifan Hassan have been doing within the final 5 years. It’s not simply that the trio have run quick — they’ve mixed to interrupt eight world data in that span — it’s that they’ve been redefining what is feasible for ladies’s distance runners.

Earlier than the freaks got here alongside, it will have been loopy to recommend that somebody might be one one of the best on the planet within the 1500 and the ten,000 meters on the identical time. However Hassan confirmed it was doable by sweeping these occasions on the 2019 Worlds in Doha. On the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, Hassan gained bronze within the 1500 and gold within the 5,000 and 10,000. Now Tsegay is attempting to comply with in her footsteps; this 12 months she ran 3:50 for 1500 on April 20 in Xiamen, then 29:05 for 10,000 a month later in Eugene. She is entered within the 1500, 5,000, and 10,000 in Paris.

(Rumors have been flying about whether or not Tsegay will truly run all three distances. Final week, Tsegay’s coach/husband Hluf Yihdego introduced on Fb that Tsegay would drop the ten,000 on account of strain from the Ethiopian federation, however he later deleted the publish. For now, she stays entered in all three — and nearly sure to run the 5,000 since that occasion concludes earlier than the 1500 or 10,000 begins.)

Hassan’s vary truly extends far past 10,000; final 12 months, simply six weeks after incomes a 1500 bronze at Worlds, she gained the Chicago Marathon in 2:13:44, the second-fastest girls’s time ever. Once more: freak.

After her Olympic triple three years in the past, Hassan is entered in 4 occasions in Paris — the 1500, 5,000, 10,000, and marathon — however shouldn’t be anticipated to contest all 4 (she is going to announce her plans in a press convention on Wednesday). Kipyegon, who’s doing the 1500 and 5,000, seems nearly lazy by comparability.

Mixed, Hassan, Kipyegon, and Tsegay have gained 10 of the 12 gold medals within the 1500/5,000/10,000 throughout the final 4 international championships (Hellen Obiri, who’s within the marathon in Paris, gained the 5000 in 2019 and Letesnebet Gidey, who isn’t within the Olympics, gained the ten,000 in 2022). On the finish of final season, it will not have been completely loopy to recommend they might sweep the Olympic podium in all three occasions.

However issues have modified since then. Hassan doesn’t seem like the identical runner as in years previous and a younger star has emerged to problem Kipyegon and Tsegay.

Kipyegon begins chase of unprecedented Olympic double

In 2023, Religion Kipyegon turned the primary lady to win the 1500 and the 5,000 on the identical World Championships. This 12 months, she is going to try and grow to be the primary to do it on the Olympics. If she will pull it off, she’d be simply the sixth distance lady to win two gold medals on the identical Olympics:

Athlete
Nation
12 months
Occasions

Tatyana Kazankina
USSR
1976
800/1500

Svetlana Masterkova
Russia
1996
800/1500

Kelly Holmes
Nice Britain
2004
800/1500

Tirunesh Dibaba
Ethiopia
2008
5,000/10,000

Sifan Hassan
Netherlands
2021
5,000/10,000

Kipyegon, already a two-time Olympic champion within the 1500, started 2024 with a powerful base interval.

“Religion had an unimaginable, optimistic winter coaching,” her agent Valentijn Trouw instructed LetsRun.com. “She did a whole lot of endurance, she was extraordinarily secure. In all features of the coaching, she was trying good and perhaps just a little bit stronger than in earlier years.”

Kipyegon was meant to open her season on the Xiamen Diamond League on April 20, however developed a minor muscle harm on the skin of her knee. She tried to coach by way of it, however it didn’t enhance, and although she didn’t miss a ton of operating — she spent about 10 days cross-training — she pushed again her schedule, skipping Xiamen and the Pre Traditional (Might 25) and never opening up till the Kenyan Olympic trials on June 14.

However any worries that Kipyegon had misplaced a step have been rapidly dispelled. She dominated the 5,000 on the trials, operating her final 1600 in 4:21 — ridiculous given the meet was held at almost 5,500 ft of altitude in Nairobi. The subsequent day, she gained the 1500 in 3:53 — once more at altitude. And in her subsequent race, the Paris Diamond League on July 7, Kipyegon broke her personal 1500 world report by operating 3:49.04. She enters Paris within the form of her life.

That’s unhealthy information for everybody else, as a result of even among the many freaks, Kipyegon merely doesn’t lose. Since she was overwhelmed by Hassan in Florence in June 2021, Kipyegon has misplaced exactly two races longer than 800 meters. The primary was a 3,000 in Doha in 2022, the place she was overwhelmed by Francine Niyonsaba — an XY DSD athlete now not eligible to compete within the girls’s class on account of extreme testosterone. Kipyegon’s solely different defeat was her final race of 2023, the highway mile world champs the place she was sick and completed third.

Kipyegon is actually the right runner. She has run greater than a second sooner at 1500m than another lady in historical past and has a monster kick. However she can be an cardio beast. Final 12 months in Paris, Letesenbet Gidey raced Kipyegon in a 5,000. Gidey, then the world report holder at 14:06.62, knew she needed to run near world report tempo to have a shot at dropping Kipyegon. That’s precisely what she did, however though Gidey ran 14:07.94, it didn’t have any impact as Kipyegon closed in 60.6 for her final lap and 28.1 for her final 200 to run 14:05.20 and break the world report herself.

Two months later, the sector on the World Championship ultimate took the alternative method, letting the tempo dawdle in an try and outkick Kipyegon. That didn’t work both. Despite the fact that Hassan (56.77) and Beatrice Chebet (56.86) each ran actually ridiculous final laps, Kipyegon was even higher, closing in 56.59.

Can anybody beat Kipyegon?

Beating Kipyegon can be a monumental problem, however there’s a cause why they run the race. And it’s not as if Kipyegon simply obliterated everybody within the 5,000 in Budapest final 12 months; she needed to dig deep and maintain pushing all the way in which to the road and solely beat Hassan by .23. Let’s have a look at the ladies who would possibly be capable of problem Kipyegon in Paris.

Sifan Hassan, Netherlands, 31 years outdated, 14:13.42 pb

Hassan is the reigning Olympic champion and final 12 months’s silver medalist, however her previous accomplishments are the one cause to incorporate her on this checklist as she has not been nice in 2024. On the Pre Traditional in Might, Hassan completed seventh in 14:34, greater than 16 seconds again of the win. Hassan was unconcerned by the consequence, saying she was within the midst of heavy coaching and that her lead to Hengelo on July 7 could be a greater indicator of her health. In that meet, Hassan was meant to run the ten,000, the place pacers have been scheduled to run 29:20 tempo, however withdrew as a result of the situations have been too windy. As an alternative, she ran the 1500 and completed a well-beaten fifth in 4:04.83. It’s onerous to see her going from that to Olympic champ in a single month.

Gudaf Tsegay, Ethiopia, 27 years outdated, 14:00.21 pb

Tsegay is the 2022 world champion at 5,000, the world report holder at 14:00.21, and has proven she may be very slot in 2024, operating 3:50 for 1500 in April and 29:05 for 10,000 a month later at Pre (although she was crushed by Beatrice Chebet within the latter race). That’s all extremely spectacular, however it’s onerous to disregard that Tsegay is 0-15 in her profession towards Kipyegon throughout all distances. That stated, 14 of these 15 matchups have been within the 1500, and of their one assembly at 5,000 meters (final 12 months’s Worlds ultimate), Tsegay was coping with an harm and completed eight seconds again.

Beatrice Chebet, Kenya, 24 years outdated, 14:05.92 pb

Chebet has taken silver and bronze within the final two Worlds, however at simply 24 years outdated, she continues to be enhancing. Final 12 months, she ran an enormous pb of 14:05 after Worlds to maneuver to #3 all-time, and this 12 months she gained her second straight World XC title in March earlier than operating a world report of 28:54 for 10,000 meters on the Pre Traditional in Might. Kipyegon did beat her by six seconds within the 5,000 on the Kenyan trials, however Kenyan athletes usually don’t hassle going all-out on the trials as soon as they’re on the crew and Chebet’s spot on the crew was by no means unsure.

Final 12 months at Worlds, Chebet closed in 56.86 for her final 400 to take the bronze. Kipyegon closed in 56.59. If Chebet is just a bit bit higher in 2024, that might be the distinction. The issue is that Kipyegon, who has already damaged her 1500m world report this 12 months, seems to have improved as properly.

The Individuals

The ladies’s 5,000 is the one distance occasion during which the USA has by no means gained a medal at Worlds or the Olympics and given how stacked the sector is in Paris, that drought is not going to finish this 12 months. It doesn’t assist that US champ Elle St. Pierre shouldn’t be even operating this occasion in Paris, opting to focus her efforts on the 1500 meters.

US runner-up Elise Cranny has been ninth on the final two Worlds and can look to complete greater than that after operating a 1500 pb of three:57 on the Olympic Trials. US third-placer Karissa Schweizer was ninth in 2019 and eleventh on the 2021 Olympics however has not made a worldwide 5,000 ultimate since then on account of harm. Whittni Morgan is the ultimate member of the US crew and could be lucky simply to make the ultimate as she was fifth on the Olympic Trials and is just on the crew as a result of two girls scratched forward of her.

JG prediction 1. Kipyegon 2. Chebet 3. Tsegay

As nice as Chebet and Tsegay are, Kipyegon is even higher. I like Chebet’s upset odds extra given she is youthful and beat Tsegay within the 10,000 at Pre. However I anticipate Kipyegon to win her third Olympic gold, which might tie her with the Tirunesh Dibaba and Tatyana Kazankina for essentially the most by a feminine distance runner.

Addition by Robert Johnson: It appears  that Kipyegon could be most susceptible if we get some type of tag crew affair with Chebet and Tsegay each making the tempo extra sincere than final 12 months after which seeing what Kipyegon has within the kick.