Gudaf Tsegay led a 100 percent Ethiopian podium finish in the 10,000 meters at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where Dutch star Sifan Hassan fell in the final meters while fighting for the gold medal.
Tsegay finished the test with a time of 31 minutes, 27 seconds and 18 hundredths, ahead of his compatriots Letesenbet Gidey (31:28.16), silver, and Ejgayehu Taye (31:28.31), bronze.
For Tsegay it is his second world title, after the success in the 5000 meters at the Eugene World Championships in 2022.
Gidey, a world record holder, was the 10,000-meter champion at that event last year and now found herself dethroned, having to settle for second place.
After a particularly slow and tactical race in the first half, the Ethiopians and then the Kenyans picked up the pace, lap by lap, leaving a leading pack of ten riders for the last two laps of the track.
Sifan Hassan, who had spent the entire event in the background, sharply increased his pace with 300 meters to go, followed by Tsegay and Gidey.
The Dutchwoman, Olympic champion of this test, found herself shoulder to shoulder with Tsegay in the last straight line and twenty meters from the end she fell, finishing eleventh, after little contact with her rival.
Despite the fall, Sifan Hassan kept his smile at the finish line, before heading to the mixed zone. He faced this World Cup with the dream of a triplet gold 1500-5000-10000 meters, a possibility that already vanishes at the first exchange.
The Latin American representatives in the final were in the last positions.
The Peruvian Luz Mery Rojas was nineteenth (33:19.61) and the Brazilian Maria Lucineida Da Silva (33:54.18) twenty-first and last among the runners who finished the test.