Reigning World Champion in the 1500m, Genzebe Dibaba is back with a bang! The Ethiopian middle distance runner fired a note of warning to her opponents after racing to the fastest ever 2000m (Indoor and Outdoor), stopping the clock at 5:23.75 in Sabadell, Spain on Tuesday.
Dibaba, who already has several World Indoor Records to her name
, shaved almost seven seconds off Gabriela Szabo’s 18-year old record (Indoor) of 5:30.53 at the Miting Internacional de Catalunya on 7th February.
The outdoor record set by Ireland’s Sonia O’Sullivan in Edinburgh in 1994, stands at 5:25.36. Morocco’s Siham Hilali finished 2nd in 5:52.88, while Genzebe’s younger sister Anna, looks set to continue in the dominating form of her older siblings, placing 3rd in a Personal Best (PB) of 5:55.34.
This is Dibaba’s sixth Indoor WR, and seventh overall. She holds the WRs in the 1500m (Outdoor and Indoor), and Indoor records in the Mile, 3000m, 5000m and 2 Mile.
Dibaba endured a lacklustre 2016 season on and off the track, and sometime in June, was unable to complete a 5000m race in a meeting in Barcelona, and had to be moved from the track in a wheelchair. That notwithstanding, she managed to win a Silver medal in the 1500m at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
