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From running barefoot, winning Olympics and World Championship gold, nearly missing world record to finally getting it, Pulse Sports highlights the 29-year-old’s journey to the top
Faith Kipyegon made history on Friday, becoming the ninth athlete ever to break a world record at a Diamond League meeting with a staggering 3:49.11 in the women's 1,500m in Florence.
The Kenyan star had said before the meeting that anything was possible and clearly felt it was only a matter of time before she broke Genzebe Dibaba's previous world record, set at the Monaco Diamond League in 2015.
However, it has not been an easy road to the top for the two-time Olympic and world champion who has now established herself as the greatest 1,500m runner of all time. Pulse sports looks at the 29-year-old’s road to the top.
Running barefoot
At the 2011 World Cross-Country Championship in Punta Umbria, Spain, a then 17-year-old Kipyegon stunned the world when she run barefoot on her way to winning the junior race.
“I run freely and fast without shoes. The spikes underneath make me uncomfortable and I lose balance,” Kipyegon, then a Standard Eight pupil at Keringet Township Primary School told Nation.
Her decision to run barefoot had been informed by a bad experience in the previous year’s World Cross-Country in Bydgoszcz, Poland where she came fourth on her international debut aged 16.
She believed her loss in the race was because the loose soil in Bydgoszcz could not give her the required grip.
Switching to 1,500m
A few months after winning in Spain, she competed in the 1,500m at the World Youth Championships in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France, winning a gold medal ahead of two Ethiopian runners with a time of 4:09.48 and breaking the championship record in the process.
At the 2012 World Junior Championships held in Barcelona, Kipyegon won the gold medal in her specialist event way ahead of the field with a time of 4:04.96. That time she also set a championship record.
The then 18-year-old qualified for the London Olympics, but at the event, she failed to advance to the semi-finals.
At the beginning of the 2013 season, she took gold in the junior race both with her team at the World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz and in May that year, run her first Diamond League meeting in Doha, Qatar where she recorded her first sub-four-minute performance, clocking an African Under-20 and Kenyan senior record of 3:56.98 to finish second.
First senior gold
At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, she won her first senior gold after clocking 4:08.94 before bagging silver at the 2015 World Championship in Beijing, China after a tactical race that she finished in 4:08.96 behind only world record holder Genzebe Dibaba, who clocked 4:08.09 while Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan (4:09.34) completed the podium.
First Olympics and world title
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, the then 22-year-old reversed the order from the previous year's World Championships when she outsprinted Dibaba in the final 200m to win gold in 4:08.92 with the Ethiopian second (4:10.27), and Jenny Simpson third in 4:10.53.
After the win in Rio, Kipyegon went to the 2017 World Championship in London as one of the favourites and did not disappoint, running 4:02.59 to win gold to become only the third woman in history to win both the Olympic and World Championships 1,500m race.
Motherhood and comeback
After her victory, Kipyegon took nearly two years out to give birth to her first child, who was delivered in 2018, before she returned to action in early 2019 in readiness for that year’s World Championships in Doha.
She later claimed silver at the World Athletics Championships in with what was then a Kenyan record of 3:54.22.
The 2021 season began with high drama for the Kenyan, who followed an 800m victory in Doha with a 1,500m battle for the ages against Hassan in Florence. Hassan may have come out on top on that night, but Kipyegon still walked away with a new Kenyan record and it was she who would go on to dominate the rest of the Diamond League season.
Near miss in Monaco
The year 2021 also saw Kipyegon defend her Olympic title in Tokyo and she continued to rack up the titles in 2022, defending her Diamond League crown in Zurich and taking World Championship gold for the second time in her career in Eugene.
Yet for all her titles, the world record continued to elude Kipyegon, with Dibaba's 3:50.07 always just slightly out of reach. She came agonisingly close at the Monaco Diamond League in August 2022, falling just 0.3 seconds short of Dibaba's time.
Florence fireworks
Having won the Diamond League season opener in a world lead in Doha last month, she promised a beautiful race in the third leg in Florence and there was no disappointment this time as she shattered the record that had stood for eight years with her breathtaking run.
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