Nobody would ever accuse Sifan Hassan of taking the easy route at the Olympics.
Heading into the last 150m of her 10-day Olympics odyssey that spanned three events and 62km, the Netherlands’ runner rubbed elbows with Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia, and then sprinted by her to win the last track event of the Paris Games.
Hassan added gold to the bronze medals she won in the 5,000m and 10,000m.
Photo: Reuters
“I feel like I am dreaming. At the end, I thought: ‘This is just a 100m sprint. Come on, Sifan. One more. Just feel it,’” Hassan said. “Every step I challenged myself, and now I am so grateful.”
Hassan raised her hands and yelled as she crossed the line, before wrapping the Dutch flag around her head. Then, taking in the enormity of her win, Hassan plunged her head in her hands and appeared to weep with joy.
The finish had everything: suspense, speed, grit and feistiness, all against the backdrop of a golden dome glittering in the morning sun.
Hassan, who was born in Ethiopia, finished in an Olympic record time of 2 hours, 22 minutes, 55 seconds. Assefa won silver, three seconds behind and Kenya’s Hellen Obiri took the bronze.
The Ethiopian team lodged a protest to have Hassan disqualified for obstruction, but it was rejected by the Jury of Appeal. It looked as if Assefa was blocking Hassan before they traded elbows.
Hassan did not attend the post-race news conference, where Assefa said she would have won if Hassan had not impeded her.
“I didn’t expect at that moment it would happen. Maybe at that moment, if she didn’t push me I would have the gold, but anyway, I’m so happy for her that she gets the gold medal,” Assefa said through a translator.
Assefa declined to specify if she asked for the protest or if it was the Ethiopian team on its own.
“I can’t say anything, but she is a good athlete,” Assefa said.
Thirty-one-year-old Hassan now has six Olympic medals. In Tokyo, Hassan won the 5,000m and 10,000m and finished third in the 1,500m.
“She has shown the world that she can do everything,” Obiri said. “People say it’s impossible, but she’s done it. So I say big up for her.”
Obiri had tried to up the pace earlier, knowing she could not take Hassan in a sprint.
“She is so strong,” Obiri said. “No way we could break her.”
Breaking from tradition, the women’s marathon was held on the final day of the Olympics instead of the men’s race.
The marathon route traced the footsteps of an historic march that took place during the French Revolution.
The Women’s March on Versailles in 1789 was organized by women in the marketplace of Paris as they protested the high price of bread.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
A debate over the soul of soccer is raging in FIFA World Cup holders Argentina, pitting defenders of the social role of the beautiful game against the government of libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei, who wants to turn clubs into for-profit companies. Argentina, which gave the world Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, is home to some of the world’s most devoted soccer fans — a fact attributed by supporters like Gabriel Nicosia to the clubs’ community outreach. Nicosia is a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo, a more than 100-year-old first division club based in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo where
RSS