When Faith and belief join forces over 1500m

Kipyegon has already cemented her legacy as the best female runner in the history of the metric mile. If she fulfils her remaining ambitions, she will figure prominently in the conversation about the greatest athletes ever

If there was any dispute about Faith Kipyegon’s claim to being the greatest women’s 1500m runner of all time, her performances over the last two months should have banished it.

No woman before July 2022 had won two Olympic and two World titles over that distance. But Kipyegon — Olympic champion at Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021, as well as World champion at London in 2017 — mastered the competition at Eugene, Oregon, to make history.

Although Sifan Hassan — the only woman to have beaten the Kenyan over 1500m since the start of 2017 — opted out to focus on the distance double (5000m-10,000m), it was still a strong field. Kipyegon finished in an impressive time of 3:52.96 to regain her World crown.

“I was facing a lot of pressure,” Kipyegon said after winning her fourth Major gold. “Everybody was expecting something special from me. Everybody was like, ‘Faith, we believe in Faith,’ so it was real pressure. But I managed it. This was my big target. I was really looking forward to this championship. I was really, really prepared for this race.”

World record attempt

As if that weren’t enough, the 28-year-old travelled to Monaco last month for the Diamond League and threatened the world record; she was just three tenths of a second off. 

Having twice clocked three-minute, 52-second runs in 2022, Kipyegon was primed for an attack on Genzebe Dibaba’s world record of 3:50.07, set in 2015 at the same venue: Stade Louis II. The 5’2” runner narrowly missed out, stopping the watch at 3:50.37, but leaving the impression that establishing a new mark was a matter of when not if.