Ethiopian-born Hassan wins again in women’s 1500m

By ANA Sports Last updated Jun 15, 2021

Ethiopian born Hassan wins yet again

A top women’s athlete in action — File pic. Lemlem Hailu Techane of Ethiopia competes in the women’s 1500m on the second day of the athletics programme in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games at the Youth Olympic Park athletics stadium in Buenos Aires in Argentina on Friday October 12 2018. Photo by Roger Sedres (CanonSA/Africa News Agency/ANA)

JOHANNESBURG, June 11 (ANA) – Fresh off her world-record setting exploits over the past seven days, Ethiopian-born Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan tasted victory again in the women’s 1500m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting, in Florence, on Thursday.

Hassan, who set a 10,000m world record on Sunday, lost it to her Ethiopian rival Letesenbet Gidey on June 6 rebounded in fine fashion. It’s not often that world records are broken, but the new women’s 10 000m global mark stood just 48 hours as Gidey lowered the new mark to 29:01.03.

Coming into the meeting, Hassan claimed that her endurance was better than her speed but when Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon challenged her on the final bend, the Dutch world champion found just enough strength to fight her off and claim the victory in a world-leading 3:53.63.

Kipyegon set a Kenyan record of 3:53.91 but it was still not enough. Laura Muir, in third, also set a near-PB of 3:55.59 in what was easily the fastest race of the year.

“I am so happy and I am so tired,’’ Hassan said afterwards.

“It was an amazing race. I thought Faith was going to beat me in the last 400m because I haven’t been working on speed and I just came from 10,000m so I don’t know where my speed came from, it surprised me.”

Regardless of this result she is not tempted to try to repeat the 1500m-10,000m double she achieved at the 2019 world championships, saying she wanted the fresh challenge of the 5000m-10,000m combination in Tokyo. – African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Michael Sherman.