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Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey sets the women’s 10,000 metres new world record on Tuesday while on the same track Dutch sprinter Sifan Hassan had set the previous record just two days before. Gidey sets a record of 29 minutes and 1.03 seconds at Ethiopia’s Olympic trials held in Hengelo in the Netherlands which means she currently holds the new world records in the 5,000m and 10,000m track.
As per the Wavelight technology that paces sprinters, Gidey made a remarkable one minute 20.2 seconds off her previous best for 10,000m of 30 minutes 21.23 seconds which had been set at the World Championships in Doha in 2019. She finished more than a minute ahead of Tsigie Gebreselama and had improved Hassan’s two-day-old by five seconds. Ababel Yeshaneh tracked Gidey for most of the way as they followed the blue lights around the infield.
Yeshaneh had dropped off the pace as the race wore on, but Gidey continued her metronomic pace by producing one 72-second lap after another. In the final lap, Gidey navigated lapped runners to sprint home and finish it at 29 minutes 1.03 seconds. She said she had expected to run a world record and she would like to try to break the world record again and break 29 minutes record. As she becomes the first woman to hold the 5,000 metres and 10,000-metre world records simultaneously since Norway’s Ingrid Kristiansen did so from 1986-1993.