Bahrain wins gold medal at Rio Olympics 2016

Manama : Bahrain’s Ruth Jebet clinched the first-ever gold medal for the Kingdom in the final of the Women’s 3,000 Steeplechase yesterday at the Rio Olympics.

Jebet, who missed out on the world record by less than a second, set a new Asian record in 8 minutes, 59.75 seconds.  She also eclipsed her previous best of 8:59.97 to finish over seven seconds ahead of silver medallist Hyvin Jepkemoi (9:07.12) of Kenya with American Emma Coburn claiming bronze (9:07.63).

In a field of 18 runners, Jebet was at the second spot by around the 600m mark. By the 1,000m point, she was leading a pack of four runners, which included Jepkemoi, Coburn and Beatrice Chepkoech (9:16.05) of Kenya.

Briefly Jepkemoi and Chepkoech jostled for the lead, but Jebet stepped up the pace soon. At the 2,200 metre mark, she had a 3.7 seconds lead over Chepkoech and kept on going, despite TV commentators thinking she had moved too early.

Jebet never gave up and just kept running, as she sensed the gold with every step nearer to the finishing line.

It is worth recalling that Jebet finished (9:12.67) almost five seconds of her next opponent in the first round of qualifying, but she followed it up with the same tactic in the final.

Going into the last lap with 400m to go, she had a lead of nearly nine seconds, while the battle for silver went on between Jepkemoi and Coburn.

As Jebet came down the final stretch, she was clearly starting to tire with one hurdle to jump and sadly failed in her quest to break the world record held by Gulnara Galkina of Russia (8:58.81).

“Today it was too hot for the athletes, it was not easy to run a good time but I tried my best and the track is good. It’s the first gold medal for Bahrain. They saw how I ran in the Diamond League and how I did there, and they told me when I was coming that ‘we’re sure of you, you’re going to have a medal’.”

The latest achievement follows the previous day’s success when Eunice Kirwa won the women’s silver in the Marathon and is Bahrain’s third ever at the Olympics when middle-distance runner Maryam Yusuf Jamal won bronze in the women’s 1500 metres in London.

Bahrain has already had its most successful ever Olympics with the prospect of more success on the way.