Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands may not have successfully defended her title in the women’s 5,000 meters, but with a silver medal in the first leg of what would be a historic Olympic treble the 31-year-old continues to push the boundaries of belief in middle and long-distance running.
Hassan, who possesses unmatched speed down the stretch, ran out of track as she tried to chase down Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet, who won the race in 14:28.56, and had to settle for a bronze medal. Gudaf Tsegay, the world record holder, finished a disappointing ninth.
But minutes after the finish, officials disqualified Kipyegon for obstruction and elevated Hassan to the silver and Nadia Battocletti of Italy to the bronze.
Kipyegon appealed the ruling on the obstruction, which appears to have occurred early in the race, when the pack was tightly bunched and Tsegay nearly tumbled to the ground, but the judges had yet to give details of the ruling more than an hour after the finish. Officials were immediately considering the appeal Monday night.
With the 5,000 out of the way, Hassan will shift her attention to the 10,000 meters, which will take place on Friday night. After that, she will have roughly 36 hours to recover for the marathon, which is scheduled for Sunday morning.
The effort seems absurd until you consider who is making it, and that it might even be easier than the one Hassan attempted in Tokyo three years ago. There, Hassan competed in the 5,000, the 10,000 and the 1,500. She won the gold medal in the two long-distance races and took the bronze in the 1,500.
Why might that have been more difficult? In general, runners who have the endurance to win the 5,000 and the 10,000 don’t have the speed to compete at the highest level in 1,500.
Apparently, Hassan does, but rather than treading on familiar ground, Hassan decided to set a goal of winning a medal in the three longest-distance running events that just one other runner has accomplished. In 1952, Emil Zatopek, the Czech distance great, won all three races at the Helsinki Olympics.
However, that was several lifetimes ago, before the distance running boom, when marathoning was the rarest of efforts, widely considered a foolhardy and potentially lethal endeavor. The only major marathons of note took place at the Olympics every four years and in Boston each April. Since then, millions of runners across the globe have entered the sport, with East Africa rising as a hotbed of distance standouts.
That said, Hassan, who immigrated to the Netherlands from Ethiopia as a refugee when she was 15, comes by her ambition honestly.
In 2023, she made her marathon debut in London. She stopped about 15 miles into the race to stretch an ailing hip and fell far behind the lead pack. But she slowly — or quickly — climbed back into contention over the next nine miles, crossed the race course with two miles to go to collect a drink, nearly getting run over by a motorbike in the process, then sprinted through London’s mall for a four-second victory.
That fall, she won the Chicago marathon just a few weeks after competing in the track and field world championships in Budapest.
Hassan was not the fastest runner in the race Monday night. Tsegay has come within 22 hundredths of a second of becoming the first woman to crack 14 minutes at the distance. Chebet and Kipyegon of Kenya had gone under 14:06.
Hassan’s fastest was 14:13.42. But Olympic distance races are rarely about time. Often run on hot summer nights and without a pace setter where all that matters is who crosses the finish line first, they usually become tactical contests, allowing a runner like Hassan, known for her deadly kick, to compete with women who would likely beat her in a time trial.
Hassan knows all this better than anyone. For the first half of the race, she hung out in last place, especially after an 80-second first lap made it clear no one was going to be setting any world records. The East Africans tucked themselves into the middle of the pack.
With a mile and a half to go, Hassan began to make her move, climbing into third to last about seven meters behind the leaders as Tsegay, Chebet, Kipyegon and Ejgayehu Taye worked at the front to try to suck the life out of Hassan’s legs. But Hassan remained stubbornly hanging on to the back of an eight-runner lead group before shooting up the ladder with 500 meters to go, chewing up and spitting out runner after runner until only Chebet and Kipyegon were left. On the final turn though, the Ethiopians revved their engines and refused to let Hassan get closer than two seconds.
After it was over, Hassan, her tight braids clinging to the top of her head, her flag on her shoulders and a giddy smile across her face, said she was petrified before the start of the race.
“I wish I could go home,” she said.
But she also added that the first lap of the race and the last one somehow felt the same, which is the sort of thing only someone who can excel at 1,500 meters and 26.2 miles would be able to say.
She claimed that her focus now was the marathon, a distance she has worked hard to adjust to and has been the main concentration of her training, though that race causes her some terror as well.
“I’m just freaking scared of the event,” she said.
But her curiosity about what might be possible outweighs her fears, fears that cause her to feel tremendous pressure that puts her on the verge of tears every time she steps on the track, however unjustified they might be, given what she has already accomplished.
“I think I’m just crazy,” she said. “I think I’m going to have some issue in my brain.”
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(Photo: Andy Astfalck /BSR Agency / Getty Images)