Ostrava featured men’s 5,000 meters exciting battle between Jacob Kiplimo and Selemon Barega in the last lap. In his first race of 2020, the 19-year-old from Uganda kicked past the Ethiopian on the homestretch to win in a personal best of 12:48.63; Selemon followed in 12:49.08. In the process, Kiplimo and Selemon ran the third and fourth-fastest times in the world this year, respectively.
Selemon’s final stretch performance earned a huge praise from the athletics world for he was under a tough condition to flex his muscles up to his liking at the time of Covid19.
Four days after breaking the world record in the one-hour run, Ethiopian Sifan Hassan returned to the track and ran the sixth-fastest 5,000-meter time this year.
The Ethio/Dutch distance runner kicked past her competition on the backstretch of the last lap to win the women’s 5,000 meters in 14:37.85 on Tuesday at the Golden Spike meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic. She beat runner-up Sheila Chelangat and third-place finisher Yasemin Can by three seconds.
Tuesday’s win is not the first time Hassan has been successful in a quick turnaround between races. During the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar, she won the 10,000-meter title on September 28 and came back to win all three rounds of the 1500 meters between October 2 and 5. In the process, she became the first person to win both the 1500 and 10,000 meters in the history of the world championships or Olympics.