7) Faith Kipeygon
Another athlete making her debut into our Top 10 list this year is Faith Kipyegon who has gone from the relatively unknown Kenyan athlete to a known one in 2016.
It was at the World Championships last year that Kipyegon went on to announce her capabilities, going on to win Silver in the women’s 1500m as Genzebe Dibaba capped her World Record (WR) outing earlier in Monaco Diamond League with a GOLD medal in Beijing.
Fast forward to 2016, and it was Kipyegon who got most of the headlines in the women’s 1500m. She was so good this year that we wrote a story anticipating a showdown with her Ethiopian counterpart Dibaba in Rio.
Prior to the Olympics, Kipyegon was undefeated and won in all the Diamond League meetings she competed in, winning most of her races with Meet Records (MR). Such was her dominance in 2016 that she ran a Kenyan National Record (NR) of 3:56.41 to win at the Eugene Diamond League. In fact, she held three of the 10 fastest times in the world this year going to the Olympics, all under 4mins.
In Rio, when it looked like Dibaba was going to snatch the win having gone in front when taking the bell, Kipyegon stayed strong with her and mustered enough courage to take her own lead, powering past in the last 200m to storm to her first major title in a time of 4:08.92.
If she continues like this going into 2017, Kipyegon, whose Personal Best is 6s shy of Dibaba’s WR of 3:50.07, might one day come close to it, although she will have to work twice as hard if she is ever to match it.
