Zurich Diamond League 2024: Beatrice Chebet shines with a blistering 5,000m run in wet and chilly conditions
Double Olympic champion Chebet raced to the seventh fastest women's 5,000m time of all time on Thursday (5 September).
Athletics
Double Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet delivered a superb solo performance winning the women’s 5,000m in a meeting record in wet and chilly conditions at the Zurich Diamond League meeting on Thursday (5 September).
Chebet lined up in the 5,000m race with the world record firmly in her sights but fell just short of adding to her 10,000m global mark.
She ran in front on her own for seven of the 12-and-a-half laps crossing the line in a meeting record of 14 minutes, 09.52 seconds (14:09.52), clocking the seventh-fastest time in history.
The Kenyan ace finished nearly 20 seconds ahead of the second-placed Ethiopian Ejgayehu Taye, who clocked 14:28.76.
American middle-distance runner Yared Nuguse outmanoeuvred a celebrated field which included world gold medallist Josh Kerr, and Olympic champions Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Cole Hocker.
Ingebrigtsen, who recently smashed the 3,000m world record at the Silesia Diamond League, was dictating the pace up front but could not shake a tenacious Nuguse in the dying seconds of the race.
Going toe-to-toe over the final straight, Nuguse found some extra gas as he dropped Ingebrigtsen with 50 metres to go racing home in 3:29.21. Ingebrigtsen followed in second with 3:29.52 and Hocker in third with 3:30.46.
High jump queen Yaroslava Mahuchikh kept her unbeaten record in the 2024 outdoor season intact winning an arm wrestle with two-time Olympic silver medallist Nicola Olyslagers.
The Olympic champion and world record holder had an early hiccup in the wet conditions failing twice at a height of 1.93m. Mahuchikh composed herself after skipping the third attempt at that height before succeeding at 1.96m.
Olyslagers had to settle for second place after scaling 1.93m on her first attempt and failing at the next height.
World 400m hurdles record holder Karsten Warholm was a late withdrawal in his pet event after tweaking a muscle in his rare 100m duel with pole vault king Armand Duplantis. Jamaica's Roshawn Clarke was the surprise winner over the one-lap barriers with a time of 47.49s with Abderrahman Samba finishing second in 47.58s.
Duplantis crowned his Zurich sojourn by bagging another pole vault victory scaling 5.82m to add to his win over Warholm the night before where he clocked a fast 10.37s.
World champion Mary Moraa, who set a 600m world best of 1:21.63 in Berlin on Sunday, claimed the top step in the women’s 800m.
Moraa raced conservatively before she turned up the tempo taking the lead with half a lap to go pulling away to win in a time of 1:57.08. Great Britain’s Georgia Bell (1:57.94) followed in second place with Addison Wiley rounding out the podium 1:58.16.
In one of the highlights of the night, Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo produced another strong finish to continue his stellar 200m run since he won gold at Paris 2024.
In the women’s 100m, Sha'Carri Richardson reigned supreme beating newly crowned Olympic champion Julien Alfred in a thrilling women's 100m race.