OSTRAVA, Czech Republic, Sep 8 – Olympic 1500m champion Faith Kipyegon continued to show her superb mettle, cruising to her third victory since the re-start of the athletics calendar with a win at the Ostrava leg of the World Athletics Continental Gold Tour.
Kipyegon clocked a season’s best tome of 3:59.05 which also counted as the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting record. She came home first ahead of Briton Laura Weightman.
It was the first race for Kipyegon in her speciality, having run the 1000m race at the season opener in Monaco and last weekend in Brussels, Belgium. In both instances, she came close to breaking the world record over the distance.
Kipyegon was peerless in the race and had a split of 2:11.84 at the 800m mark and timed 3:15.39 after 1200m.
Meanwhile in the women’s 5,000m, Sheila Chelagat finished second in a race won by Netherland’s Sifan Hassan. Chelagat clocked a personal best time of 14:40:51, three seconds behind the Dutch who ran a season’s best time of 14:37:85.
In the men’s 1500m Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen took full advantage of Timothy Cheruiyot’s absence to win the race in 3:33:92 ahead of Kenyan youngster Kumari Taki who clocked a personal best time of 3:34:14 to come in second.
In the 800m, Kenya’s Commonwealth Games champion Wycliffe Kinyama could only finish seventh in a time of 1:45:53 in his first race of the season. Britain’s Jake Wightman won the race in 1:44:18.
