Back on the streets of Copenhagen, another glitzing masterclass in endurance running was produced by Kenya’s Agnes Ngetichand she lowered the wrack once more. In a bright Sunday morning at the WorldAthleticsRoadrunning championships, the 25-year-old sprinted to the women half marathon win and shaved a second off the women’s only world record in 01:05.15.
Ngetich was in the lead from the first kilometre and she was not to be caught. Ngetich broke through the 10 seconds barrier that she remains in the lead by five kilometres and she carefully increased her gap to finish easily in 1 hour, 4 minutes and 66 seconds, 50 seconds ahead of her team-mate Veronica Loleo. Ngetich had broken Peres Jepchirchir’s existing record of 1:05:16, which was in play since the Kenya star used it to win the 2020 world title in Gdyniamaking Jepchirchir and Ngetich the creators of the third world record in their collection of so far broken records, the first two being the overall and women-only 10k marks they each own, respectively.
The race was run with clinical efficiency. Ngetich ran the early stages aggressively, spending just over 30 minutes 39 seconds to reach 10 kilometres, and remained relentlessly hungry to take her through the Danish capital. By the 20 kilometre point she was comfortably over 50 seconds clear, and was still able to pick up the pace dramatically down the back straight when she realised the world record was in sight. She said after that ‘when I looked at the stopwatch I realised I was two seconds short of it, so I thought, I can’t let this go’. She dedicated the effort later to her mother.
Loleo was second in 1:06:05, with another national best of 1:06:08 by the Rwandan, Florence Niyonkuru, taking the bronze. Kenya’s Daisilah Jerono led home a pack for fourth, with the Kenyan Ngetich Loleo Jerono and also claiming the team laurels.
This was her second global title of 2019. In January she ran away from the field to win the senior women’s race at the World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee. The endurance magician combined speed and strength on the flat, fast surface in making history, becoming the first woman to run sub-29 for 10k in a mixed contest, then the first to dip under 30 minutes in a women-only 10k. The half-marathon record completes a collection of unprecedented achievements.
The governing body for athletics, World Athletics, make clear distinctions of record marking between performances achieved in mixed races, in which the runners have the use of male pacers, and those achieved in women-only races. Keep in mind Letesenbet Gidey’ world record for the half-marathon of 1:02:52 set in a mixed race event in 2021 still stands and is the fastest performance ever in that distance in the world. Ngetich’s new record is by itself the fastest performance of all time in a women-only event.
The future: as far as the track is concerned, Ngetich has made her running aspirations clear. After putting together impressive outings over 3000 and 5000 metres so far in the 2018 season, she has set her sights on gold at the 2017 World Athletics Championships.
