When Elle St. Pierre sprinted past Gudaf Tsegay to win the women’s 3,000m at the recent World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the American might have inadvertently sown the seeds for something very special.
For, Tsegay — a multi-time world champion with a vast array of medals across a range of distances — has a history of bouncing back from defeat in spectacular fashion. And with the Paris Olympics looming, the Ethiopian is determined to make it a summer to remember.
Outdoor focus
Tsegay has excellent indoor pedigree — she owns a world title and a world record (both in the 1,500m) under a closed roof — but her focus this year is outdoors, something she has made very clear. Ahead of her first appearance of 2024, indoors at the Boston Grand Prix in February, she disarmingly told reporters that she was “not indoor-focused”.
“Olympics for an athlete is a very big competition, I’m a medallist in the Olympics, not a champion yet,” Tsegay said. “I’m an indoor champion, two-time world champion, but not Olympic champion. So my focus is that. It’s my dream.”
Despite the emphasis on the Paris Games, Tsegay did triumph in Boston (1,500m) and at her next indoor competition in Lievin (3,000m) before taking silver in Glasgow. “In sport, everything happens, so I accept this result,” she said after finishing behind St. Pierre. “I’m not happy but I accept it, it motivates me to do better next time.”
These are hardly fighting words — Tsegay is too soft-spoken for that — but her rivals would nevertheless have taken note of her unhappiness. For, it was only last year that she had used the pain of defeat as a springboard for a stunning assault on the 5,000m world record.
At the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Tsegay won a dramatic women’s 10,000 metres — down the home stretch, she pulled up tightly beside leader Sifan Hassan, who stumbled and fell about 20 metres from the finish line — but the euphoria faded a week later.
As the reigning 5,000m world champion, Tsegay was eager to defend her title and make it an extraordinary 5,000-10,000 double in Budapest, but things unravelled. “After the 10,000m, I had some pain under the bottom of my foot,” she said. “I think it had something to do with the hot weather. It was very painful even to walk, I could not sleep.”
Not at her physical best, the Ethiopian finished 13th — her only defeat in 10 finals in 2023. “I was so mad,” Tsegay said. “Training had gone so well and I really wanted to bring two medals back to my people. But life and sport are like this; sometimes you fall down, sometimes you win.”
Pillar of strength: As husband and coach, former Ethiopian athlete Hiluf Yihdego has been a source of support for Tsegay. | Photo credit: Getty Images
Using anger as fuel
She used the hurt and anger as fuel, showing up at the Eugene Diamond League three weeks later in September with only one thing on her mind: the 5,000m world record. Her coach and husband Hiluf Yihdego, a former Ethiopian athlete, thought Tsegay had it in her. “My coach told me, ‘You can still break the [world] record with the fitness you have’,” she said.
“So I trained well and before the event I asked the organisers to set the world record pace [on the trackside LED pacing lights].” When Tsegay’s pacing request was announced, some observers commented that the conditions were far from ideal: they said most distance records were set in cooler evening conditions and earlier in the season before fatigue sets in.
But Tsegay set a blistering pace from the start, pulled away from her nearest rival with about 800 metres to go and sprinted down the final metres with gritted teeth. The fans at Hayward Field erupted with joy as she broke the tape. She had carved roughly five seconds off the previous 5,000m record of 14:05.20 set by the great Faith Kipyegon.
The new world record of 14:00.21 — more than 38 seconds quicker than her bronze-winning time at the Tokyo Olympics — led Tsegay to say that her next target was running the 5,000 metres in less than 14 minutes. “It was a very short time after the World Championships, so it was hard and a bit of a surprise,” she said. “I think I can run under 14 with a lot of focused training and some time between races.”
Battling the best: In Paris, Tsegay will be determined to step out of the shadows cast by the great Faith Kipyegon (left) and Sifan Hassan (centre). | Photo credit: Getty Images
If Tsegay can pull off a sub-14-minute run at the Paris Games, she will step out of the shadows cast by Kipyegon and Hassan, who, between them, have dominated the distances she competes in: the 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m. While Tsegay’s collection of titles is glittering, Kipyegon and Hassan have won two Olympic gold medals each in addition to multiple world titles. They are two of history’s finest; Tsegay wants to add her name to that list.
At 27, she is younger than both Kipyegon (30) and Hassan (31), but she, too, is pursued by younger rivals — including compatriot and 10,000m world record holder Letesenbet Gidey. A Paris triumph is fraught with challenges, but overcoming adversity isn’t new to the Ethiopian.
Battling a crisis
When she won her first outdoor world title (5,000m, Eugene 2022), Tsegay was battling a personal crisis. She had not been able to talk to her parents and siblings for months — Tigray, where Tsegay is from, was the epicentre of Ethiopia’s bloody civil war and was under a communication blackout.
In December 2021, she and her husband were woken from their sleep by government forces, who took Yihdego away. He was released after a day, but having to deal with such a harrowing experience months before the World Championships would have broken most.
So Tsegay will look forward to Paris 2024 knowing that she has mastered challenges many top athletes will struggle to fathom. The athletic challenge of facing Kipyegon and Hassan, depending on which events each of them runs, will still be considerable, however. Given all three are world class across a range of distances, it will be interesting to see which battles they pick.
“I like the 1,500 and 5,000 much more,” said Tsegay when she was asked which distance she prefers. “The 10,000 is not an event where I have a lot of experience, but now I feel very special as I managed to add one more world title at a different distance.”
Tsegay is set to train at home and compete “at some Diamonds [League]” ahead of the Olympics. They will offer a sense of how her Paris dream is likely to play out. The one thing you can be certain of is that she will leave no stone unturned in her attempt to fulfil it.
