Dibaba wins in Tilburg with fourth-fastest 10km in history

Just three days after her loss to rival Meseret Defar over 5000m in Zurich, World and Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba took to the roads in Tilburg on Sunday (1) in search of a World record.

The Ethiopian fell short of her target, but only just. Her winning time of 30:30 was the fourth-fastest performance in history for 10km. It also broke her own national record from earlier this year as she ran 19 seconds faster than she did in Manchester back in May.

In just her third ever race over the distance on the roads, Dibaba covered the first half in 15:21, which left her with a lot of ground to make up in the second half if she was to challenge Paula Radcliffe’s World record of 30:21 set more than a decade ago.

By this point, the 27-year-old was 21 seconds ahead of her nearest challenger, fellow Ethiopian Genet Yalew, the 2011 World cross-country junior silver medallist. Kenya’s Esther Chemtai was just one second adrift of Yalew in third place.

Despite covering the second 5km section in 15:09, Dibaba had left herself with too much work to do in her World record bid and crossed the line in 30:30 – a time that only three other women in history have bettered.

Dibaba’s winning time also took a 27-second chunk off the course record, set last year by Gladys Cherono, the Kenyan who finished second to Dibaba in the 10,000m at this year’s World Championships.

Chemtai overtook Yalew to finish second, but was more than one-and-a-half minutes behind Dibaba, finishing in 32:06 with Yalew clocking 32:09. Read more