If mother-of-one Faith Kipyegon is this good at 29, just wait until she's over 35 and multiparous
Despite going into yesterday having won four of the past five global 1,500-meter titles, the world-record holder did something newly amazing
(I’m now a few posts into ignoring professional running forever, offering enough data points for a tentative assessment of the project. According to The New York Times, MSNBC, and the CDC, it’s going well, while Fox News has withheld comment.)
Yesterday in Budapest at the World Athletics Championships, Faith Kipyegon—who went into the meeting having set three outdoor world records in 2023 (1,500 meters, mile, 5,000 meters) and pushed expectations of herself into the ionosphere—did something unexpected even for her in the women’s 1,500-meter final. At least it looked that way, not just from the race splits but from the finish-line expressions of Kipyegon and the awestruck yet ebullient women left not flailing but racing in the Kenyan’s almost luminiferous wake.
Kipyegon, who will not turn 30 until January, is probably already the best female distance runner in history, at least if the roads are excluded. In addition to owning history’s fastest marks in the 1,500 meters (3:49.11), mile (4:07.64), and 5,000 meters (14:05.20), Kipyegon twice won the women’s junior 6K race at the World Cross Country Championships, and as a 16-year-old placed fourth while running without the aid of footwear (or in her case, supershoeless). That barefoot adventure at World Cross was in 2010, so Kipyegon has been keeping the Faith for a while despite her comparative youth.
After her victory in the 1,500 meters in Hungary, Kipyegon has now won five of the last six global outdoor 1,500-meter titles on offer, taking gold at two Summer Olympic Games (2016 and 2021) and three World Athletics Championships (2017, 2022, and 2023). At the 2019 World Championships 1,500 meters in Doha, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, the only woman middle-distance to long-distance runner who may have had a better track career than Kipyegon so far, defeated Kipyegon soundly, 3:51.95 to 3:54.22.
Despite having to settle for silver, Kipyegon had run a personal best, and a Kenyan national record, by over two seconds. Remember that, even after I intentionally derail you with interesting but off-plot sidebars.
(Doha 2019 is believed to have been the locus of the formal rollout into the pro ranks of Nike’s ZoomX-enhanced track spikes. Although I never stray far from trolling the company’s informal rollout of spiky shenanigans, in creating these shoes, the company’s mechanical engineering team did something I never expected to see in my lifetime. This is elegant and truly amazing work. And it looks so simple now: The model in play since the 1980s of making racing shoes lighter and lighter while maintaining some degree of cushioning was self-limiting, so Nike found a way to add mass in the form of tiny, independently moving parts in a way that boosted running economy so much that the extra mass was more than justified. These engineers created a new machine in the shape of a midsole—not motorized, as that would require a battery or other external power source, but mechanized. So, inarguably still a shoe, but something of a systems override all the same. Classic.)
Kipyegon had run 3:55.14 in winning her semifinal heat in Budapest. Hassan was expected to be her foremost rival despite evidence of recent physical and mental travails. Hassan, you see, had fallen on her face on Saturday while leading the 10,000-meter final by a second or so with about 30 meters to go. Although three Ethiopians flew by Hassan while she was still down, she could have easily gotten fourth place, but she flapped and fucked around for so long that she wound up 26 seconds behind winner Gusaf Tsegay (but still four seconds and one place ahead of 12th-place Elise Cranny of the United States). Her behavior afterward evinced a bizarre admixture of supremely good sportswomanship and complete ignorance of what it was she had intended to accomplish only minutes before.
After the gun went off, the field ceded the lead to Kipyegon. I can’t embed the best YouTube video of the race I found, because—and this is an abridged version— YouTube is run by people who should be shot naked from cannons into the ionosphere, where their lifeless bodies can tumble around amid abstractions such as Faith Kipyegon’s attainable but not-yet-run time of 13:58.34 for 5,000 meters. But it’s available—at least for now—if you sufficiently interact with the minimally annotated screen-shot from the video below.
Kipyegon hit three laps to go in a shade over 48 seconds, putting her on pace for just over four minutes. Nothing resembling a lollygag for most of the field, but not at all taxing for someone who has covered the distance at under 61.1 seconds per lap.
Kipyegon was allowed to maintain the lead through 800 meters despite slowing significantly on the second lap, coming through in 2:11.78, or 4:07.09 pace. She then opened her stride just a twist an ran the next 300 meters in 46.46 to hit the bell in 2:58.24. Although she had covered the last three-fourths of a lap at 3:52.3 pace, she hadn’t shaken her serious challengers free—the slow early pace had ensured that the pack could absorb such a burst. And as it was, with 400 meters to go, Kipyegon was still only on shedyool to run 4:03.06.
That’s when she show started. Not just the Kipyegon show, though she was its director and star. After holding a lead of 0.08 seconds at the bell, Kipyegon inexorably extended her advantage to 0.24 seconds with 300 meters to go, 0.39 seconds with half a lap left, and 0.60 seconds coming into the final straightaway. Hassan was valiantly working to overtake Ethiopian Diribe Welteji, who in turn was only slowly losing ground to the queen of the discipline.
When it was over, Kipyegon was the winner by 0.82 seconds over Welteji, 3:54.87 to 3:55.69. The lead women appeared separated by more than that because they were all ghosts on the track, the sponsor-banners on the infield behind almost seeming to ripple in the heat of the linear melee. Kipyegon’s last lap took her only 56.63 seconds, and the top six women all ran under a minute for their final 400 meters. 4:03 pace at the bell isn’t fast anymore, but it’s never been slow enough to allow any woman to run 3:32-and-change pace for the last lap, especially without summarily destroying the field in the process.
I mentioned that in 2019, the then-25-year-old Kipyegon, after giving birth the year before to her daughter Alyn Kipyegon, ran a big personal best of 3:54.22 in losing to Hassan at the World Championships. That was a lot of fast 1,500-meter races ago. Including the 3:51.41 split Kipyegon recorded en route to her world-record mile last month, she has run ten 1,500-meter races faster than the 3:54.87 she ran yesterday. Eight of those are on the list of Kipyegon’s top ten performances per World Athletics points, and in addition to that 3:54.22, she ran 3:53.91 in a June 2021 race in Firenze, Italy.
The main reason I would give the edge to Kipyegon over Hassan at this point despite Hassan having similar times, only one fewer global gold medal, and a more extensive range is that it’s harder to win 1,500-meter championships than it is to win titles at 5,000 meters or 10,000 meters, all else the same. A better way to put that is that superior fitness alone is not quite the same advantage it is in longer races, and three of Hassan’s global golds have been in the 5,000 meters (one) and the 10,000 meters (two). Pulling off double gold twice (Doha 2019, 1,500 meters and 10,000 meters; Tokyo 2021, 5000 meters and 10,000 meters) is a great look while it lasts each time, but Kipyegon spreading her strut over five different sites and seven years feels more satisfying.
Kipyegon will presumably take a shot at breaking her 5,000-meter world record before the summer is over. She’s running that event in Budapest, with the semifinals going off today, but I strongly doubt she’ll try to break 14:00 or do anything besides run to win in Saturday’s final, assuming she qualifies. And if she doesn’t break that record, or any more records, in 2023, there’s always next summer, when Kipyegon will finally be thirty. (Then again, Hicham El Guerrouj retired at 29.)