Does Gidey’s run today qualify for the 20km world best? I assume she’s the first woman under 1 hour for the distance.
Does Gidey’s run today qualify for the 20km world best? I assume she’s the first woman under 1 hour for the distance.
Her 20K split was 59:45.909 according to tracking. It would have won the USATF 20K championships outright outkicking Ben True at the line, and that was with her speeding up even more over the final 1.1K:
https://www.flipsnack.com/usatf/2021-usatf-20-km-championships-results/full-view.html
It's certainly the first sub-hour 20K but I'm not sure if they had the "official" timing for it to count as a world best.
The previous record looks to be 1:00:43 by Ruth Chepngetich during her WR run in April:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20K_run#Women
According to that list, even Gidey's full HM split of 1:02:52 would make her the 23rd fastest 20K performer of all time, despite the extra distance. Totally mind-blowing
And to repeat a fun stat that's worth repeating, this 20K split actually qualifies as the world One Hour Run best as well, because nobody has ever run that far in an hour.
Even if they didn't have a one-hour split at the race, this should still count because even if Gidey came to a complete stop at 20K and waited out the clock, she still would have crushed Sifan Hassan's previous record of 18.9K with a nice 15-second break at the end:
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