Chitchat Sensational Women's !0,000m Run - 18 PBs (a record that may never be broken)

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Anyone seen this sensational race? 23 yr record broken in her second 10K run. First 13 runners broke various national and international records. 18 runners achieved PBs which sets a unbelievable precedence. Usually the 10K is rather boring but this was totally different. By lap 4 you knew that the pace was crazy. In lap 8, the pace set by the Kenyan runner Alice Aprot Nawowuna with her long strides set the tone and it was blistering and it broke the field. By lap 11, over lapping began. Organisers were totally lost and did not clear the inside track. And they never did.

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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...ecord-olympics
Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana smashes 10,000m world record on way to gold
• Ayana beats previous record set in 1993 by 14 seconds

Almaz Ayana had anticipated the question and, when it came, she merely nodded before smiling. How could we trust her, she was asked, given she had just obliterated the world 10,000m record by nearly 14 seconds in winning Olympic gold – on what was only her second appearance on the track at the distance?

“Three things,” she said, through her interpreter. “Number one, did my training,” she said. “Number two, I praise the Lord, he is giving me everything, everything, everything. And my doping is my training, my doping is Jesus. Otherwise, nothing. I am crystal clear.”

It was hardly the answer to reassure a sceptical public. But then what could she say that would? She had just smashed a record that had stood for 23 years. And not any old record either but that of the Olympic champion and multiple world record holder Wang Junxia, who was part of “Ma’s Army” and was revealed by Chinese state media earlier this year as being part of a state-sponsored doping regime back in the 1990s.

In 1993 Junxia ran 29min 31.78sec, 22 seconds faster than anyone else in history. Yet after a moderate opening lap Ayana had run at such speed that she surpassed that easily as she dropped a stacked field to win in 29:17.45 – a time that also beather personal best by 43 seconds. This was every bit as spectacular and jaw-dropping as Florence Griffiths-Joyner breaking the women’s 100m world record in Seoul. What made it more extraordinary still was that Ayana was coughing in the call room beforehand.

Behind her was the Kenyan world champion, Vivian Cheruiyot, who took silver in 29:32.53, while the defending champion, Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia, was third in a personal best of 29:42.56. Incredibly the first 13 athletes home all set world records, national records or personal bests, while there were 18 PBs in total in the 35-strong field, including Britain’s Jess Andrews who finished 16th in 31:35.92.

It surely helped that the athletes were running on a newly laid track that its makers, Mondo, have prepared for the Rio Olympics. They insist it is the fastest ever – and athletes who have tried it agree. On this evidence that hype appears justified.

But afterwards the Swedish athlete Sarah Lahti, who finished 12th, was sceptical. “It is too easy for her,” she said. “We see no facial expressions while the rest of us are struggling for life at the back. How much difference can there be.”

Britain’s Jo Pavey, who finished an impressive 15th in her fifth Olympics at the age of 42, was clearly struggling to comprehend what she had just seen. “You don’t think the Chinese records will ever go,” she said. “You don’t always think of them as records really. That was an amazing race. I never thought that would happen. It was absolutely unbelievable. I don’t know whether to have been pleased or not to have been in that.”

When it was put to her that Ayana might be cheating, Pavey said it would be wrong to accuse anyone without evidence. “You can’t say anything unless you’ve got any proof,” she said. “You’ve just got to admire performances until you know differently. I’ve got no reason to say everybody who does well is cheating. But unfortunately this sport’s had a lot of dark days in the past few months. You just have to hope you can believe what you are seeing.”

Others were not so diplomatic. The world marathon champion Paula Radcliffe said: “I’m not sure that I can understand that. When I saw the world record set in 1993, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And Ayana has absolutely blitzed that time.”

Her fellow BBC commentator Brendan Foster also sounded less than convinced. “You see things pushed along sometimes. You think of Bob Beamon in the long jump. But I’m not sure what to make of that to be honest.”

The 24-year-old Ayana was originally a 3,000m steeplechaser before moving up to 5,000m, a distance she won the world championships last year. But she made her 10,000m debut only in June, recording the fastest 10,000m debut in history at the Ethiopian Olympic trials. That was impressive enough. But what she did in Rio was stratospheric.

The pace was sedate enough in the first lap that Pavey was comfortable in fourth but very quickly a huge injection of pace from the Kenyan Alice Aprot Nawowuna left the field stretched. The athletes were soon spread out with only eight in medal contention: three Ethiopians, three Kenyans, the Turk Yasemin Can and the American Molly Huddle. Gradually they were whittled down. Yet despite the relentless pace, Ayana looked comfortable throughout and, when she went to the front with 12 laps to go, no one could live with her.

“That was not my plan,” she admitted. “I just wanted to run a good race but fortunately I broke the world record. It was fantastic for me – I’m not naturally gifted in speed programmes so I concentrated on endurance programmes and, if God helps, I’ll run it again in the future.”


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