Week in Review: Neugebauer racks up huge score
German decathlete's 8,708 total in Texas Relays is highest ever this early in season
Numbers mean a lot in the decathlon. And the numbers that Leo Neugebauer of the University of Texas posted in winning that event in the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin last week bode well for him during a year in which he hopes to win his second consecutive NCAA title and become the first German since 1996 to win a medal in the decathlon in the Olympic Games.
Five Germans have combined to win six medals in the decathlon in the last six editions of the World Athletics Championships, but Frank Busemann is the last German to have medaled in the Olympic Games when he finished second to Dan O’Brien of the U.S. in Atlanta in 1996.
The 23-year-old Neugebauer appears capable of ending that Olympic medal drought in Paris in August as he totaled 8,708 points in the Texas Relays at Mike A. Myers Stadium while finishing more than a thousand points in front of second-place Lee Walburn of Washington State at 7,694.
Neugebauer’s score was the best in the world this year, the second-best of his career, and 230 points better than the 8,478 score he had posted in winning last year’s Texas Relays.
“I would say I was just very consistent all over the board, and in the decathlon, that’s the most important thing,” he said about his performance in a Flotrack interview.
He added that he’s not yet in optimum shape for the decathlon because he was very focused on winning his first NCAA title in the seven-event heptathlon during the indoor season, and the heptathlon has no events that are similar to decathlon events such as the discus or the javelin.
“My body’s not quite 100 percent there yet because I came off the indoor heptathlon,” he explained.
Nonetheless, he totaled 4,620 points on the first day of competition on March 27 before a solid second day produced a score that was 128 points shy of the collegiate record of 8,836 that he set in last year’s NCAA championships.
There was a lot to report on from last week. Therefore, this column is on the long side. If this email appears clipped or truncated in your inbox, you should be able to click on “View entire message” to read it in its entirety.
Neugebauer began the first day by running the 100 meters in 10.74 seconds for a total of 919 points. He then spanned 7.81 meters (25 feet 7½ inches) in the long jump for 1,012 points and put the shot a personal best of 17.26 (56-7½) for another 929.
He was awarded 850 points when he cleared 2.05 (6-8¾) in the high jump before he capped his first day with a 47.99 effort in the 400 that was worth 910 points and brought his five-event total to 4,620 points, 29 more than he had scored in the NCAA meet.
Although he began his second day with a solid 14.51 clocking in the 110-meter high hurdles, he had run a wind-aided 14.10 in the NCAA meet. And when his discus best of 51.50 (168-11) was well short of the 55.06 (180-8) he had thrown in last year’s national collegiate title meet, his overall score of 6,432 left him 97 points behind the 6,529 he had totaled after seven events last year.
He then concluded the competition by clearing 5.10 (16-8¾) in the pole vault, throwing the javelin of 58.99 (193-6), and running the 1,500 meters in 4:51.05.
Although his effort in the javelin was a personal best, his marks in the pole vault and 1,500 were not as good as the 5.21 (17-1¼) and the 4:48.00 efforts he had produced in the NCAA championships.
While no one had ever previously exceeded 8,700 points in a decathlon until May 7, Neugebauer knows that producing a great score early in the year does not guarantee success in global title meets that are held later in the season.
The German learned that first hand last year when he entered the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in August with the best score in the world at 8,836 points, but finished fifth with a total of 8,645.
In contrast, first-place Pierce LePage of Canada (8,909), third-place Lindon Victor of Grenada (8,756), and fourth-place Karel Tilga of Estonia (8,681) all produced personal bests in the meet and second-place Damian Warner of Canada (8,804) registered a season best that was the third-best score of his career.
Neugebauer had gotten off to a great start in Budapest as his best-ever first-day score of 4,640 points left him in first place, 20 points ahead of second-place LePage, 62 ahead of third-place Warner, and 164 up on fourth-place Victor. But he dropped to fourth place after seven events due to sub-par efforts in the high hurdles at 14.75 and in the discus at 47.63 (156-3). He later slipped to fifth after concluding the competition with a time of 4:43.93 in the 1,500, which is his weakest event.
While that finish was no doubt disappointing to Neugebauer and his fans at the time, he was his usual affable self after his victory in the Texas Relays, saying that his performance “makes me really excited. It makes me more focused. It makes me more focused in general.”
He also said he thinks “there’s big things to come this summer.”
The numbers would agree.
Outstanding opener: Julien Alfred of St. Lucia, Rhasidat Adeleke of Ireland, Dina Asher-Smith of Great Britain, and Lanae Thomas of Jamaica opened up their outdoor seasons with a pair of notable relay performances in the Texas Relays last Saturday.
Running for a squad called Team International, a quartet of Asher-Smith, Adeleke, Thomas, and Alfred posted the fastest time in history when it ran 1 minute 27.05 seconds in winning the 800-meter relay in its first race of the day before Asher-Smith, Thomas, Adeleke, and Alfred won the 1,600 relay in 3:25.21 near the end of the meet.
The team won the 800 relay by more than four seconds with a time that was faster than the world record of 1:27.46 set by a U.S. squad in 2020, but it could not count as a world record because the quartet’s members were not from the same country.
The team received a much bigger challenge in the 1,600 relay as a Captain Athletics squad consisting of Americans Paris Peoples, Britton Wilson, and Shamier Little, and Shafiqua Maloney of Saint Vincent finished second in 3:25.87.
The meet was a competitive homecoming of sorts for Alfred and Adeleke, as they had had a hand in four victories in last June’s NCAA championships at the same facility while leading host Texas to the women’s team title. They had both turned pro shortly after that, with Alfred finishing fourth in the 200 and fifth in the 100 in the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, and Adeleke placing fourth in the 400.
Alfred then had a short, but very productive, indoor season that she capped by winning the 60-meter dash in the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, on March 2.
Speedy start: Gabby Thomas of the U.S. began her outdoor season with a trio of noteworthy performances in the Texas Relays last Saturday.
The silver medalist in the 200 meters in the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, last August, Thomas first ran the second leg on an American 400 relay team that won that event in 42.45 seconds, the fastest time in the world this year.
She then won the 100 in a wind-aided 10.88 while turning back relay teammates Celera Barnes in second place in 11.00 and Tamara Clark in third in 11.03.
Roughly 30 minutes later, she won the 200 in a meet-record and yearly world-leading time of 22.08 while finishing ahead of second-place Clark in 22.21 and third-place Lynna Irby-Johnson of the U.S. in 22.70.
Although the 27-year-old Thomas said in a Citius Mag interview she was a “little annoyed” that the wind reading in the 100 cost her a chance to lower her personal best of 11.00, she felt like her performance was an indication that she can perform at a high level in that race, as well as in the 200.
“I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder with the 100 because no one ever considers me a 100-meter runner,” she said. “But I feel like I am. And I work really hard and I’m getting better and my start’s getting better. My transition’s getting better. And so I do want to prove to everyone that I can run it. Because I know I can. I know I can run with the heavy-hitter 100-meter runners.”
Good start: Valarie Allman of the U.S. produced a yearly world-leading throw of 67.98 (223-0) in the women’s discus in the Texas Relays last Friday.
The defending Olympic champion had a large margin of victory in her season opener as Jayden Ulrich of the U.S. placed second at 60.16 (197-4).
All five of the 29-year-old Allman’s fair throws would have easily won the competition as she registered efforts of 62.27 (210-10), 65.31 (214-3), and 64.12 (210-4) in the first three rounds before hitting 67.98 on her fourth throw.
Sher followed that with a 63.85 (209-5) effort in the fifth round before fouling on her sixth — and final — attempt.
Going off: Junior Jordan Davis of Southern Connecticut State University set an NCAA Division II record of 83.77 (274-10) in the men’s javelin in a come-from-behind victory in the Texas Relays last Friday.
The 2022 Division II champion added nearly six meters to his pre-meet personal best of 74.37 (244-0) with a throw of 80.36 (263-8) on his first effort of the competition. He had a foul in the second round before producing throws 77.65 (254-9), 78.33 (257-0), and 75.50 on his third, fourth, and fifth attempts.
Curtis Thompson, the top-ranked javelin thrower in the U.S. for the past three seasons by Track & Field News, took the lead with a fifth-round effort of 81.09 (266-0). But Davis responded with his 83.77 best on his sixth — and final — attempt that moved him to fifth on the all-time collegiate performer list.
“It was a good feeling, you kind of knew right away,” he was quoted as saying about his winning effort in a post on the Hartford Courant site. “You didn’t know how far it was exactly, but I definitely knew it was a far throw, and then the number came out and we all got real excited. It’s definitely cool, especially coming from a small school. Everyone always asks, why Southern, why such a small school? But I just see it as we have something special here.”
Scaling the heights: Junior Brynn King of Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester, New York, set her second NCAA Division II record of the outdoor season when she cleared 4.68 (15-4¼) to win the women’s pole vault elite event in the Texas Relays last Saturday.
Freshman Hana Moll of the University of Washington, the NCAA indoor champion, Anicka Newell of Canada, and Emily Grove of the U.S. each cleared 4.50 (14-9), but they ended up finishing second, third, and fourth, respectively, based on the tiebreaking rules.
King, who had raised the Division II indoor record three times during the recently-concluded undercover season, passed at the opening height of 4.15 (13-7¼) before clearing 4.30 (14-4¼) on her first attempt. She then passed at 4.40 (14-5¼) before making 4.50 on her second attempt.
She then made an unconventional decision to pass at 4.60 (15-1), as Moll and Newell were ahead of her at that point because they had cleared 4.50 on their first attempts. But when those two and Grove missed all three of their tries at 4.60, King had the bar raised to 4.68 and cleared it on her second attempt before she missed three times at 4.74 (15-6½).
King’s winning height was three centimeters higher than her indoor best of 4.65 (15-3) that she had set in winning the Division II championships on March 8 and it moved her to fourth on the all-time collegiate outdoor performer list.
“We weren't as focused on other people, we just stuck to our plan,” King was quoted as saying in a robertsredhawks.com post. “The meet was moving pretty fast, so we decided to pass on 4.6 and get a little bit of extra rest and go for 4.68.”
After Moll, Newell, and Grove went out at 4.60, King said that “I knew that I just had to go out there and make a jump. I knew that I had the pole and I had the grip, I just had to go out there and execute.”
Locals perform well: A Gainesville Elite quartet of Americans Grant Holloway, Pjai Austin, and Erriyon Knighton, and Liberian Joseph Fahnbulleh posted the fastest time in the world this year in the men’s 400-meter relay when they won the event in 37.67 seconds in the Florida Relays at Percy Beard Track in Gainesville last Saturday.
A USA Red team appeared to be in contention for the victory at the end of the third leg, but Kendal Williams and World 100 champion Noah Lyles were unable to connect on the final exchange. Brandon Carnes and recently crowned World 60 champion Christian Coleman handled the first two legs for the squad.
Austin later won the invitational 100 in 10.02 to finish well ahead of second-place Fahnbulleh in 10.09.
The first sub-10: Favour Ashe of Auburn University ran a yearly world-leading time of 9.99 seconds in winning the men’s 100 meters in the Florida Relays last Saturday.
The junior from Nigeria finished well ahead of second-place Jamarion Stubbs of Alabama State, who ran a personal best of 10.18.
The winning time was equal to the second-fastest of Ashe’s career. He had run a personal best of 9.96 in a semifinal of the NCAA championships last year, but finished a disappointing eighth in the final in 10.02.
Big drop: Sam Whitmarsh of Texas A&M slashed more than a second and a half off his personal best in the 800 meters when he ran 1:44.46 in winning the event in the Battle on the Bayou meet at Bernie Moore Stadium at LSU last Saturday.
The time by the Aggie junior came in his first 800 race of the outdoor season and moved him to seventh on the all-time collegiate performer list in the event, as well as to second on the all-time school list behind the 1:43.55 clocking that Donovan Brazier had run as a freshman in winning the 2016 NCAA title.
Whitmarsh had run his previous personal best of 1:46.09 in finishing second in the 2022 SEC championships when he was a freshman, but that season ended shortly after that when he was diagnosed with a heart condition.
He ran a season best of 1:46.36 last year, but he did not advance to the final of the NCAA championships when he finished a non-qualifying sixth in 1:50.12 in his semifinal.
He won the SEC indoor title in 1:47.39 earlier this year, but fell just short of gaining one of the 16 semifinal spots in the NCAA championships.
On the board: Christopher Morales Williams of the University of Georgia, the biggest surprise story of the collegiate indoor season, opened his outdoor campaign with a winning time of 45.18 seconds in the men’s 400 meters in the Battle on the Bayou meet last Saturday.
Kennedy Lightner of Kentucky placed second in 45.41 and Auhmad Robinson of Texas A&M finished third in 45.42.
Morales-Williams, a sophomore from Canada, had started 2024 with 400-meter bests of 45.48 outdoors and 47.42 indoors, but he ended up posting the No. 1 and 7 indoor clockings in history with times of 44.49 and 44.67, respectively.
His 44.49 effort came in the SEC championships at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Feb. 24 and was the fastest ever run on a 200-meter track. But it was not eligible for world record ratification because the starting blocks in use at the meet were not the type that World Athletics requires for record purposes.
Undeterred, Morales-Williams won the NCAA title two weeks later with the 44.67 clocking at The Track at New Balance in Brighton, Massachusetts, that left him more than two tenths of a second in front of second-place Robinson, who ran a personal best of 44.91.
Sign of big things to come?: Favour Ofili of Nigeria turned in a fast — albeit wind-aided — early-season clocking when she won the women’s 100 meters in the Battle on the Bayou meet at LSU last Saturday.
Aided by a breeze of 2.6 meters-per-second, Ofili ran 10.85 seconds to turn back a field that included LSU sophomore Brianna Lyston (10.87) in second place, Mississippi senior McKenzie Long (10.89) in third, and LSU senior Thelma Davies (10.98) in fourth.
Lyston and Long are coming off an indoor season in which they won the 60 and placed second in the 200, respectively, in the NCAA indoor championships on March 9.
However, Ofili had a disappointing outdoor season last year. Her bests were 11.17 in the 100 and 22.58 in the 200 as an LSU junior and she finished fifth in the 100 in the SEC championships and was eliminated in the semifinals of the 200 in both the NCAA championships and the World Athletics Championships.
Those performances followed a 2022 season in which she had defeated Abby Steiner of Kentucky for the SEC titles in the 100 and 200 and posted personal bests of 10.93 and 21.96 in those events.
She signed a contract with Adidas last summer and her performance on Saturday would seem to indicate that her training is going well.
Three for three: Letsile Tebogo of Botswana produced his third yearly world-leading mark of the season when he won the men’s 200 meters in 19.94 seconds in the Association of South Africa Grand Prix 3 meet in Johannesburg on March 27.
The 20-year Tebogo, who placed second in the 100 and third in the 200 in the World Championships last year, had previously set a world best of 30.69 in the 300 in the Curro Podium meet in Pretoria, South Africa, on Feb. 17, and a personal best of 44.29 in winning the 400 in the ASA Grand Prix 2 meet, also in Pretoria, on March 18.
Tebogo’s time was the fourth-fastest of his career and he produced it while running into a head wind of 1.2 meters-per-second.
Two liners: Pablo Mateo of France won the men’s 100 meters in a wind-aided 9.92 seconds and the 200 in 20.03 in the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin last Saturday. Mateo’s time in the 200 was aided by a breeze of 2.0 meters-per-second, the maximum for record purposes, and it bettered his previous best of 20.25 and made him the third-fastest Frenchman in history. . . . . O’Brien Wasome of Jamaica bounded a yearly world-leading outdoor best of 17.09 (56 feet 1 inch) in the men’s triple jump in the Texas Relays last Saturday. Wasome’s compatriot, Jordan Scott, finished in second place at 17.02 (55-10¼). . . . . Alison dos Santos of Brazil, the 2022 World champion in the men’s 400-meter intermediate hurdles, won the 400 in 45.25 in the Florida Relays at Percy Beard Track in Gainesville last Saturday. It was the first race of the year for dos Santos, who placed fifth in the intermediate hurdles in last year’s World Championships after missing much of the season because he had undergone surgery due to a meniscus injury in his right knee. . . . . Freshman JaMeesia Ford of the University of South Carolina won her 10th individual race as a collegian without a loss when she clocked 22.37 in the women’s 200 in the Florida Relays last Friday. The NCAA indoor 200 champion also had a hand in a pair of victories on Saturday as she ran a leg on a victorious 400 relay team that clocked 43.34 before running a 49.38-second anchor leg on a Gamecock foursome that won the 1,600 relay in 3:28.57. . . . . Juniors Shannon Flockhart and Kimberly May of Providence College posted the two fastest collegiate times of the year in the women’s 1,500 meters when they ran 4:08.84 and 4:09.22 in the Raleigh Relays at Paul H. Derr Track on the campus of North Carolina State last Friday. Flockhart made up more than five seconds on May during the final 400 meters of the race as she ran her last lap in 63.53 seconds.
Record run ends: After nearly 20 years, the national high school record of 3:35.49 in the girls’ 1,600-meter relay was broken last Saturday when a team from Bullis School in Potomoc, Maryland, clocked 3:35.23 in winning a scintillating race in the Florida Relays at Percy Beard Track in Gainesville in which Northwestern High in Miami placed second in 3:36.12 and Montverde Academy of Montverde, Florida, finished third in 3:37.94.
The time turned in by the Bullis team of Payton Payne, Kennedy Brown, Sydney Sutton, and Morgan Rothwell lowered the previous best of 3:35.49 set by Long Beach Poly in the 2004 California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Championships in Sacramento.
Shalonda Solomon, who ran a 51.6-second anchor leg on that Poly team, is now a married mother of two girls and a registered nurse in Orlando, Florida. She said in a telephone call on Tuesday that she was surprised that the record set by her and teammates Shana Woods, Dashanta Harris, and Jasmine Lee had lasted as long as it had. She added that it was humbling to know that people still remembered that team.
Solomon had a stellar high school career in which she ran 11.35 in the 100 and 22.82 in the 200, and finished second in the 100 or 200 a combined seven times in the state championships during her prep career. But she said the relay victories and team championships stand out most to her.
“Team-wise we won a lot of titles,” she said. “And with the 1,600 relay coming at the end of the meet, a win in that race often happened when we also won a team championship.”
Poly, which has won an unprecedented 15 girls’ team titles in the CIF State meet, won three championships during Solomon’s four-year varsity career and the Jackrabbits won three consecutive 4 x 100 and 4 x 400 titles from 2002-04.
While they set national records of 44.50 in the 4 x 100 relay and 1:33.87 in the 4 x 200 during Solomon’s senior season in 2004, they might have been most impressive in the 4 x 400 as they ran under 3:37 three times that year and broke that barrier a combined seven times from 2002-04.
I found it interesting to note that while Sutton and Rothwell were credited with splits of 53.5 and 53.4, respectively, on their final two legs for Bullis on Saturday, Solomon’s 51.6 anchor in 2004 followed a 52.6 carry by Lee, and a pair of 55.6 legs from Woods and Harris.
For the record: A note in my My Week in Review post on March 21 was incorrect when it stated that junior Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura High School in California was going to bypass the 2024 prep season so she could compete in races against professional athletes in order to increase her chances of meeting the automatic qualifying standard of 4:06.00 in the women’s 1,500 meters for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials that will be held in Eugene, Oregon, from June 21-30.
Engelhardt, who ran a personal best of 4:09.70 in winning the women’s 1,500 in The TEN meet in San Juan Capistrano, California, on March 16, still has plans to try to meet the standard for the Trials, or get close enough to it that she could participate in the meet if the number of automatic qualifiers was below the desired number. But she has competed for her high school team since The TEN meet and is scheduled to run in the girls’ 4 x 800-meter relay and the invitational mile in the two-day Arcadia Invitational in Southern California that starts this afternoon and concludes on Saturday night.
The multi-event competitions will start with the heptathlon high jump at 5:45 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, today, and the first events on the track and in the field during the “Burning Batons” session will begin at 8.
The second day of the multi-events will start with the heptathlon long jump at 11:30 a.m., EDT, on Saturday, with the first open division events on the track and in the field beginning at 12:30 p.m.
The invitational portion of the meet will start at 6:45 p.m. with the boys’ invitational discus and the first track event will be the girls’ seeded 4 x 100 relay at 8 p.m.
Engelhardt is scheduled to compete in the invitational race of the girls’ 4 x 800 relay at 8:37 p.m. today before running in the girls’ invitational mile at 10:52 p.m. on Saturday. She is the two-time defending champion in the mile.
You can click here for the meet schedule and here for a free live webcast that will begin at 8 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, tonight.
Rolling on: With his second consecutive victory in the senior men’s race of the 45th edition of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, last Saturday, Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda added to his impressive streak of performances in the global title meet.
The 23-year-old Kiplimo, who was 15 when he represented Uganda in the 5,000 meters in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, won the U20 (under) title in the World Cross Country Championships in 2017 in Kampala, Uganda, before finishing second to teammate Joshua Cheptegei in the senior race in 2019 in Aarhus, Denmark, and winning last year’s contest in Bathurst, Australia, and Saturday’s race at Friendship Park in Belgrade.
Kiplimo, who clocked 28:09 over the 10,025-meter course, was content to run in the middle of the lead pack for much of the race before moving toward the front with about three kilometers to go and taking control of the contest with about a kilometer remaining.
While Aregawi narrowed Kiplimo’s margin of victory from nine seconds last year to three seconds on Saturday, he never made a serious run at Kiplimo after the Ugandan broke open the race.
Benson Sigei placed third in 28:14 while pacing Kenya to its second consecutive team title and record 26th overall. The Kenyans had four of the top seven finishers while totaling 19 points to finish comfortably ahead of second-place Uganda with 31 points and third-place Ethiopia with 40. Spain placed fourth with 99 points, followed by Australia with 106.
For a detailed report about all five races contested during the World Athletics Cross Country Championships last Saturday, you can click here. You can also click here for a meet preview that forecasted the strong possibility of a Kenyan sweep in the senior women’s race.
Kiplimo’s victory made him the first runner since Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya in 2015 and ’17 to repeat as the senior men’s champion. It was also his fifth win in a row since he had returned to competition last October after a hamstring injury forced him to withdraw from the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in August.
Included in his streak is a 15-kilometer road race in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in November when he tied the world record of 41:05 set in 2018 by Cheptegei, the winner of the last three World titles in the 10,000, as well as the 5,000 in the Olympic Games in 2021.
“I was hungry for medals after missing Budapest last year,” Kiplimo said. “I was in good shape, but then the injury happened and I had to get treatment, but I am back now. My goal this year is to do what Joshua Cheptegei did and win an Olympic gold. My main focus is the 10,000, but I'm not sure yet if I want to double.”
Struggles continue: I’m not sure what to make of Joshua Cheptegei’s sixth-place finish in the senior men’s race of the World Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, last Saturday.
The 27-year-old Ugandan paced a lead pack of 10 runners through 7,700 meters, but he was left behind when the race heated up in the final two kilometers and finished 15 seconds behind winner — and compatriot — Jacob Kiplimo, who ran 28:09 over the 10,025-meter course.
Cheptegai had used his wicked last-lap kick to win his third consecutive title in the men’s 10,000 meters in the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, last August, but he has been beaten in all three of his races since then.
In addition to his sixth-place finish on Saturday, he finished 39th in 2:08:59 in his marathon debut in Valencia, Spain, in December and second in a 10k road race in Laredo, Spain, on March 16 when his time of 26:53 left him 16 seconds behind Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia.
“I felt competitive today and battled from the front,” Cheptegei was quoted as saying in the NN Running Team Instagram account. “Unfortunately, I fell short of winning a medal, but it was a good test leading up to Paris this summer.”
Kenyan domination: Beatrice Chebet led Kenya to a sweep of the first five places in the senior women’s race of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, last Saturday.
The 24-year-old Chebet entered the race as the defending champion and the third-fastest 5,000-meter runner in history with a personal best of 14:05.92, but she was regarded as something of an underdog after finishing fourth in the Kenyan trials race four weeks earlier.
In addition, compatriots Agnes Ngetich and Emmaculate Anyango had placed first and second in the Kenyan trials after becoming the first women in history to run under 29 minutes in a 10,000-meter road race when they clocked stunning times of 28:46 and 28:57, respectively, in the 10K Valencia Ibercaja in Spain in January.
Chebet, Ngetich, Anyango, and Kenyan teammates Lilian Rengeruk and Margaret Kipkemboi occupied the top five places in Saturday’s race before the halfway mark and they were they were 13 seconds ahead of sixth-place Sarah Chelangat of Uganda when they came through 7,700 meters.
They continued to pull away from Chelangat during the final three-plus kilometers of the 10,025-meter contest, but Anyango dropped off the back of the lead group at the 28:30 mark and Ngetich had to let go 30 seconds later.
Rengeruk held a slight lead over Chebet and Kipkemboi when they descended a bridge at the 30:18 mark, and Rengeruk and Chebet began to separate from Kipkemboi shortly after that.
Rengeruk held her small lead for another 10 seconds or so and then Chebet, looking calm and relaxed, moved into first place and had expanded her advantage over her teammate to three seconds when she crossed the finish line in 31:05.
Rengeruk finished second in 31:08, followed by Kipkemboi in 31:09, Anyango in 31:24, and Ngetich in 31:27.
Chebet’s victory marked the ninth consecutive time that a Kenyan had won the senior women’s race in the global title meet. It also made her the first woman to have won two senior championships in a row since Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia did so in 2005-06, and it gave her three consecutive victories in the meet as she won the women’s U20 (under 20) title in 2019.
Kenya totaled a perfect 10 points while winning its second title in a row, third in four years, and 11th overall. Ethiopia placed second with 41 points, followed by Uganda with 44, the U.S. with 113, and Spain with 126.
It was the second time in the history of the meet that a women’s team had swept all three individual medals. The first occurred in 2017, when Kenya had the top six finishers.
“We won the team title, that showed very strong teamwork,” Chebet said in a World Athletics post. “After trials we trained together, we eat the same food. We were a team and being together helped us achieve the best result here.”
She later added that it wasn’t easy to defend her individual championship.
“There is a lot of pressure,” she said. “My target was to be on the podium. I felt I was stronger with about 500 [meters] to go. The course was so good, the weather was good like in Kenya, very sunny, and the obstacles were not as hard.”
The beat goes on: East African runners continued their dominance of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, last Saturday as individuals and teams from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda combined to win all 12 available individual medals in the men’s and women’s races at the senior and U20 (under 20) levels.
Teams from Kenya and Ethiopia also finished first and second in the senior mixed 4 x 2-kilometer relay, a race in which Great Britain won the bronze medal.
Overall, Kenya won 11 medals, followed by Ethiopia with 10, Uganda with five, and Great Britain with one.
Kenya won six of the nine available gold medals, followed by Ethiopia with two, and Uganda with one.