Rising Ethiopian athletics star Yalemzerf Yehualaw broke the world record in the 10km road running after winning the World Athletics Label race in Castellon, Spain in 29:14 min. Vicoty Chepngeno (Kenya) finished second in 30:14 min and the 2013 world 5,000m silver medallist Mercy Cherono (Kenya) finished third in 30:48 min.
“It was hard for me not to be able to compete in Valencia in January but I resumed my training and faced today’s race very optimistically”, said Yalemzerf Yehualaw, whose idols include Haile Gebrselassie and Meseret Defar. “I knew I had the world record in my legs and wanted to produce a challenging performance for any athletes who may attempt the record in the near future. I’ll likely do a half marathon in the coming months. I won’t focus on the track season because I probably wouldn’t challenge for a place on Ethiopia’s 10,000m team for the World Championships. Instead, I plan to tackle the marathon later in the year and the World Half Marathon Championships in Yangzhou in November”, added she.
Yalemzerf Yehualaw is a 22-years-old Ethiopian long-distance runner. In 2019, she represented Ethiopia at the 2019 African Games held in Rabat, Morocco and she won the women’s half marathon event. She also set a new African Games record in this event of 1:10:26. In the same year, she also won the Great Ethiopian Run held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia setting a new course record of 31:55. In 2020, she won the bronze medal in the women’s half marathon at the 2020 World Athletics Half Marathon Championships held in Gdynia, Poland. In 2021, Yalemzerf Yehualaw competed in the Antrim Coast Half Marathon in Northern Ireland setting a new world record time of 1:03:43, the record was not ratified because the course was 54 meters short.
