Kenya: Cheptegei breaks 10,000m world record

10/08/2020 World



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Joshua Cheptegei broke the world record of 10,000 meters on the track on Wednesday in Valencia with a time of 26 minutes and 11.00 seconds.

It lowered the previous mark of 26: 17.53 set by Kenenisa Bekele on August 26, 2005 in Brussels.

Kenyan pacemaker Nicholas Kimeli led Cheptegei halfway at 13:07:73 before leaving Uganda to fight in a wave-led race.

This was the third world record of the 24-year-old 10,000m world champion this year and cemented his position as the new master of the middle distance.

In February he claimed the world record for 5km on the road in Monaco.

Then, after a period of coronavirus lockdown in his native Uganda, he returned to Monaco and, in his first run back, erased almost two seconds of Bekele’s world record time of 16 years on the track above 5,000m while it ticked 12 minutes 35.35 seconds. .

Cheptegei gave notice of his class when he took silver at the 2017 world championships in London while he was still 20 years old.

Last year was better, collecting gold in Doha. He had already won the world cross-country championship five months earlier.

As of Wednesday, Cheptegei had only the 18th fastest time in the distance with a best in Doha of 26 minutes 48.36 seconds, more than half a minute off the record.

But his performance in August boded well and he was assisted by some fast pacemakers, notably the Kenyan Nicholas Kimeli, who was a 5,000-meter world finalist.