It’s like clockwork.
Every year for the past three years, there has been at least one Diamond League meeting with two world records.
It began in Paris in June 2023, when Faith Kipyegon broke the women’s 5000m record and Lamecha Girma made history in the men’s 3000m steeplechase.
A few months later, pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and 5000m runner Gudaf Tsegay delivered another double world record at the Wanda Diamond League Final in Eugene.
Duplantis was at it again in 2024, setting his 10th world record on the same day Jakob Ingebrigtsen sailed to immortality in the 3000m in Silesia. That, in turn, came just a few weeks after Kipyegon and Yaroslava Mahuchikh’s records in the 1500m and high jump in Paris.
This year, it was a Kenyan double, as Kipyegon and her compatriot Beatrice Chebet both rewrote the record books once again at Hayward Field.
It was the first time that two athletes from the same country had ever broken a world record at the same Diamond League meeting, and as both Chebet and Kipyegon later confirmed, they had both taken inspiration from each other.
The two Kenyan distance stars had both been in scintillating form in the first half of the season. Chebet had already broken the 3000m Diamond League record in Rabat, while Kipyegon had made an audacious attempt at the first female four-minute mile in Paris.
They both arrived in Eugene with their sights firmly set on the world record.
Chebet was up first, attacking the 5000m on the same track where Tsegay had set the world record at the Diamond League Final two years earlier.
She not only bettered that mark, but also became the first woman ever to go under 14 minutes, clocking a staggering 13:58.06.
After crossing the line, the 25-year-old admitted that Kipyegon’s four-minute mile attempt had inspired her to break new ground in the 5000m.
“I said: if Faith is trying, why not me? I have to go and try,” she said. “Faith has been a close friend to me. She always encourages me and even today, she told me to go and do it. So now I need to go back and tell her to do it in the 1500m too.”
Just over an hour later, Kipyegon did just that, clocking 3:48.68 to knock almost half a second off her previous best from Paris in 2024.
It was her fifth world record at a Diamond League meeting in three seasons, confirming her status as the undisputed queen of Kenyan distance running.
Yet Kipyegon insisted that none of it would have been possible without younger athletes like Chebet pushing her to greatness,
“These ladies are pushing me: When I broke a world record, they are running very fast, and that is what I wanted, to motivate the younger generation to come and do even better,” she said.
“I love them. I love competing with them and I tell them: let’s push each other and we never know what barriers we can still break.”
