Daily Times

TOKYO: World champion Sifan Hassan capped her audacious bid for an Olympic treble with a stunning victory in the women’s 10,000 metres on Saturday for her second gold, and third medal, of the Tokyo Games. The Ethiopian-born Dutch runner kicked off her non-stop week of track action with victory in the 5,000m on Monday. There followed a bronze in Friday’s 1500m, before she dusted down her spikes just 24 hours later for a tilt at the longest of her chosen disciplines in the same testing hot and humid conditions that have beset the Olympics. “I am so happy and I cried during the medal ceremony. I actually realised that I am done, the Games are over,” said Hassan, who emulated Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba’s distance double at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “I am just so thankful, and I don’t think I could have done any better than this. During the medal ceremony I was thinking: ‘It is over. Now you can sleep!'” She added: “It’s not about how strong I am but how strong are the ladies I challenge. Now I am happy, I am done, it’s over.” With heats and semi-finals as well, it meant Hassan was in action on five days of the nine-day schedule of track and field. In fact, she ran over 61 laps on the track over the nine days, including competing in a 1500m heat — in which she recovered from a dramatic fall — on the same day as the 5,000m final.