Faith Kipyegon will be chasing victory in the 1,500m at the Diamond League’s Pietro Menea Golden Gala

Kenyan athlete Faith Kipyegon will be chasing victory in the 1,500m at the Diamond League’s Pietro Menea Golden Gala, which returns to Florence after 2021. The race is on June 2.

Diamond League 1,500m winner Faith Kipyegon will return to the stadium where she broke Kenya’s record in the event. The 29-year-old athlete has mixed memories of Florence, where she was defeated by Sifan Hassan two years ago.

Faith Kipyegon is a Kenyan middle-distance runner specializing in the 1500 metres. A Rio 2016 Olympics and Tokyo 2020 Olympics champion with the Games record at the latter, she is the second woman in history to claim back-to-back Olympic titles at the event. On the track she has won or finished second in every major championships since 2015, and is regarded the greatest female 1,500m runner in history. Faith Kipyegon is a two-time world champion from 2017 and 2022 as well as two-time world silver medallist from 2015, when she lost only to the multiple world record-holder Genzebe Dibaba, and 2019, when she returned after giving birth in previous year. In August 2022, she achieved the second-fastest time in history, setting her consecutive Kenyan record.

Kipyegon was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2017.