Gidey won bronze over 10,000m at the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer
(Picture: Getty Images)Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey destroyed the world half-marathon record by more than a minute with a stunning run in Valencia on Sunday morning.
The 23-year-old came home in one hour, two minutes and 52 seconds, shattering the previous best of 1:04:02 set by Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich in Istanbul in April.
Another Ethiopian, Yalemzerf Yehualaw, ran 1:03:44 in County Antrim in August but that mark has not been ratified and has now been bested as well.
Gidey had also broken the 5,000m world record on the track in Valencia last year and added the 10,000m best to her CV in the Netherlands back in June, breaking Dutch star Sifan Hassan’s record only 48 hours after it had been set.
Gidey opted to focus on the 10,000m at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but was comprehensively out kicked by Hassan on the final lap and was forced to settle for bronze.
However, she returned to form in emphatic fashion on her half-marathon debut, finishing clear of Yehualaw, whose 1:03:51 was also inside the previous world record.
The men’s race was won by Kenya’s Abel Kipchumba in a time of 58:07, which takes him to sixth on the all-time list.
