Letesenbet Gidey achieves the 4th best 5000m performance in historyA successful Sunday for Letesenbet Gidey. The Ethiopian won the 5000 m race at the Berlin Meeting, setting the fourth-best performance in history in the process.
Sunday September 03 will always remain in Letesenbet Gidey's mind and in the history of athletics. The Ethiopian won the 5000 m at the Berlin meeting, finishing in 14min8sec79. This exceptional feat is quite simply the 4th best world performance of all time. She finished 3sec59 off the world record held by Faith Kipyegon. The latter ran 14min5sec20 on June 9 at Charléty.
Letesenbet Gidey thus enters the history books of the 5000 m. The 25-year-old runner also has another special feature. Setting aside the current world record, she has the second, third and fourth fastest times in history.Proof that Gidey is one of the absolute benchmarks for this distance.
An impressive track record
Before 2023, Letesenbet Gidey had already made her mark. In 2020, at just 22 years of age, the Ethiopian created a sensation in Valencia with the 5000m world record in 14 min 06 s 62. A record that had not been beaten since 2008 by her compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba (14 min 11 s 15). She will retain the title of best 5000m runner until 2023.
Letesenbet Gidey will also be world champion in the 10,000 in 2022.She also holds the world record for this distance (29 min 1 s 03 in 2021). She also broke the world half-marathon record (1 h 2 min 52 s in 2021). All this to say that her performance in Berlin on Sunday is just the logical continuation of years of top-level performances. Her next duels with Kipyegon promise to be hotly contested.
3rd September - #Tigray's Letesenbet Gidey just won the ISTAF Berlin 5,000m in 14:08.79 in Berlin Germany
Letesenbet now has the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fastest times ever in the 5K.
Sport | @ZDF
🔗https://t.co/yZIGKVl4RY pic.twitter.com/P2rVDy7acp— Tigray Update (@TigrayUpdate) September 3, 2023
