Ugandan Joushua Cheptegei broke a decade and a half record to become the new World 5000m champion.
Cheptegei slashed almost two seconds off Bekele’s record with a stunning performance of 12:35:36 at the Monaco Diamond League on Friday.
The Ugandan currently the World 10,000m champion had to travel more than 75 hours from Uganda to Monaco for the meet and the world record was worth his travel trauma. Joshua Cheptegei ran every lap of 400m consistently at an average of 60.48 seconds and ran the last lap at an incredible time of 59.64 seconds.
“It took a lot of minds setting to keep being motivated this year because of so many people are staying at home, but have to be motivated, I pushed myself,” he said after the world-record performance.
Prior to this he also won the 5000m on road in Monaco in February this year clocking 12:51minutes.
Cheptege was born in Kapchorwa as the second eldest of nine siblings. His first international success came in the South Indian city of Bangalore in 2014 when he came second in the World 10KM race.
Ethiopian Keneisa Bekele set the World record in 2004 at Hengelo when he was just 21.
“It is very difficult to run any world record” Bekele posted on his Instagram page and said “Congratulations to my teammate Cheptegei”
The Monaco Diamond League is considered the first full track competition in 2020 amidst the global Corona pandemic.
The post Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei breaks World 5000m record first appeared on The African Gazette.