In a scintillating solo performance on Friday morning, Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana obliterated the world 10,000m record to win the first gold of the athletics events at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. With ever-increasing doubts and scrutiny over top level performances in athletics these days, can the 25-year-old help to restore faith in the sport?
In the world of sport, there are great performances. There are also unbelievable, out-of-the-blue results that drop jaws and have fans grasping for air. And then, there is Almaz Ayana, whose performance in the final of the women’s 10,000m final at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games had a few atheists screaming “Oh My God”.
It was barely noon Rio time before Ayana, who came into the Games having ran a world-leading mark for the event, took hold of the race at the 4,000m mark, ran incredible splits for the remainder of the race before stopping the clock at 29:17.63. This is a massive fourteen seconds better than Chinese woman Wang Junxia’s previous world record time and twenty-seven seconds faster than compatriot and defending champion Tirunesh Dibaba’s Olympic record time.
In often-tactical major championship races, sub-30 minute clockings are extremely rare. Even rarer is a long distance world record in an Olympic final. It is in fact so rare that the last Ethiopian to achieve this feat was Abebe Bikila, who clocked 2:12.00 to win the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Tokyo fifty-six years ago.
“It’s a dream come true,” she said of her performance. “I never thought that this would happen and I’m so in awe. I’m very happy to get here.”
But this is a sport recently scarred by widespread allegations of doping and corruption, which helped athletes get away with using performance-enhancing drugs for some time. No sooner than the end of the women’s 10,000m final, the familiar questions and shadows of doubt started to appear.
“My doping is my training,” said Ayana, who is coached by her husband and former 1,500m runner, Soressa Fida. “My doping is Jesus. Otherwise, I’m crystal clean.”
The last times the world and Olympic 10,000m records were broken, the unbelievable performances proved to be just that… unbelievable!
In an incredible summer that shocked the world, Junxia, one of controversial Chinese coach, Ma Junren’s, ‘soldiers’, smashed the world 10,000m in Beijing. That year, Junren’s athletes also broke world records in the women’s 1,500m, 3,000m and 5,000m. Two of those records have since been broken by Ethiopian athletes, while Junxia’s 8:06.11 for the 3,000m still stands today.
While Junren has since been banned from coaching, sceptics of these fast times were vindicated earlier this year when a letter, purportedly written by Junxia and given to investigative reporter Zhao Yu, claimed to contain a confession from the athlete about the widespread use of drugs.
“The past has truly been a tale of blood and tears,” read the letter. “What we have told you about how Coach Ma verbally and physically abused us for years is true. It is also true that he tricked and forced us into using large quantities of banned drugs for years.”
The world athletics governing body, the IAAF, has since opened an investigation into the letter a year after it moved to provisionally ban the athlete who also influenced the outcome of the 2008 Olympic 10,000m title.
Eight years ago in Beijing, Ethiopian-born Elvan Abeylegesse looked on course for a historic gold for her adopted Turkey when she took control of the women’s 10,000m in the last five laps. Lap after lap, she dropped all her close rivals to set up a dramatic final 400m with Dibaba. Dibaba eventually outkicked the diminutive Turk to claim gold and an Olympic record of 29:54, but it seemed like a gut-wrenching effort from the-then European champion who had also chased Dibaba to a world championship silver a year earlier in Osaka.
But weeks before the world championships in Beijing last year, Abeylegesse’s world and previous pedigree came tumbling down when a reanalysis of her urine sample from Osaka turned positive for a banned substance. She was subsequently banned for two years, with her results from 2007 and 2009 scrapped from the record books.
So why should we believe Ayana?
With so much scepticism going around, it is easy to put Ayana’s performance under renewed scrutiny. But unlike other doping performances that are registered ‘out of the blue’, Ayana’s achievements so far have come following three seasons of consistent improvement.
Ayana came to global attention last year, when she made light work of beating compatriot and world 1,500m record holder Genzebe Dibaba in the World Championship 5,000m final by using the same tactics she used in Rio. After winning the final diamond league race in Zurich (again beating G. Dibaba), Ayana was actually injured for the final third of 2015 and the first half of 2016 and only returned to competition in May 2016 with the injury wiping out her 2016 indoor season.
In the outdoor campaign, she scared the world 5,000m record twice – in Rabat, Morocco and Rome, Italy – before winning her debut 10,000m race in Hengelo, Netherlands, in 30:07.00 – the fastest ever time by a debutant of the event.
Ayana’s rise to prominence has not followed a planned path. Initially a 3,000m steeplechaser, whose only top performance was a junior world record, Ayana shifted to the 5,000m in 2013 and gave Meseret Defar a run for her money before settling for bronze in the World Championship final, where Defar picked up her second world title.
On Friday, it wasn’t just Ayana who entered record territory. She also took three runners into the all-time top five for the distance, while her fast pace pushed the chasing pack to ten personal bests and a further six national records.
Her record is subject to the IAAF’s usual ratification processes and Ayana will be tested repeatedly between now and the end of the season to prove her clean performance. But a performance like hers will have turned many from doubters to believers!
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