Genzebe Dibaba

Background

Genzebe Dibaba comes from an athletic Oromo family. Her older sister Tirunesh is a celebrated athlete who won many major medals. Another older sister, Ejegayehu, won the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and her brother Dejene is also an athlete. Her cousin is Derartu Tulu, 1992 and 2000 Olympic champion in 10,000 m.

Career

Dibaba won the junior women's title at both the 2008 and 2009 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and finished fifth in the same event in 2007. Dibaba became the second junior woman ever to win two junior cross country championships in a row. She also competed in IAAF Golden League meetings, including the Reebok Grand Prix and the Oslo Bislett Games. At the 2008 Bislett Games she recorded a personal best time of 15:02.41 in the 5000 metres, during the same race where her sister Tirunesh set a new world record. She did the same a year later in the same race, improving her personal best by more than five seconds.

2009–2010

After winning the 5000 m at the Ethiopian Athletics Championships, she was included in the Ethiopian squad for the 2009 IAAF World Athletics Championships. In Berlin she replaced Tirunesh on Ethiopia's 5000 m team, who withdrew due to injury. Dibaba ran an excellent heat, finishing fourth and qualifying for the final where, in her first major senior championship race, she finished in eighth position. She also won the 5000 m gold at the 2009 African Junior Athletics Championships.

She began her 2009–10 cross country campaign with a win at the Cross de Atapuerca. She also competed indoors, improving her 1500 m best to 4:04.80 at the Indoor Flanders meeting. Despite her wins on the senior circuit, she failed to complete a hat-trick of junior race titles at the 2010 IAAF World Cross Country Championships. She performed far below expectations, ending up in eleventh and barely making it into the silver medal winning Ethiopian team. Her fortunes improved at the 2010 World Junior Championships in Athletics as she defeated the junior cross country winner Mercy Cherono to take the 5000 m gold in a championship record time. In November she took a second consecutive victory at the Cross de Atapueca, taking a prominent scalp in Emily Chebet (the reigning senior champion).

2011–2012

She was the runner-up at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country in January 2011 behind Linet Masai. She placed ninth at the 2011 IAAF World Cross Country Championships two months later.

Dibaba improved her 5000 m best to 14:37.56 minutes at the Bislett Games and went on to place eighth in the event at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics. After this point she began to move away from the 5000 m an focus on the 1500 metres instead – a move which paid significant dividends for her career. She began 2012 with the fifth fastest ever indoor 1500 m, winning the Weltklasse in Karlsruhe in 4:00.13 minutes. A win at the Aviva Indoor Grand Prix preceded her first world title at the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships. Turning to the outdoor track, she ran an Ethiopian record time of 3:57.77 minutes at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix. She was third at the Golden Gala and runner-up at the Bislett Games. She was selected for the 2012 London Olympics, but a hamstring injury in the final lap of her heat saw her eliminated from the competition.

2013–2014

Dibaba opened 2013 on grass, winning the 3 km competition at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country, then took two indoor wins in Karlsruhe and Birmingham.

On February 1, 2014, in Karlsruhe, Germany, Dibaba ran 3:55.17 in the 1500 m indoor event, beating the previous indoor world record by over 3 seconds. This mark was the fastest 1500 m in the world, indoor or outdoor, since 1997.

Five days later, she improved the world indoor record in the 3000 metres to 8:16.60 at the XL Galan meet in Stockholm, Sweden. In that one race, she improved her own personal record by over thirty seconds, the world record by almost seven, and even though it was set on a shorter track indoors, her time was the number four time at the distance ever. Only on one occasion has the time been bettered, that was the 1993 Chinese National Games, when three athletes Wang Junxia, Qu Yunxia and Zhang Linli set the event on its ear, running times that had previously not been approached in two decades.In the month of February and in just 15 days Dibaba broke her third world record at indoor two-mile record at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix nine minutes and 0.48 seconds was her new record that shattered Meseret Defar previous record by six seconds.

With these records, Dibaba is one of only three athletes in history to break three world records in three different events within 15 days, joining Jesse Owens, who set three world records and tied another within 1 hour, and Usain Bolt. She stands alone as the only one to do this feat in three different cities and meets, and in all individual events under FAT.

In summer IAAF Diamond League competition, Dibaba won the 1500 at Monaco.

2015

During 2015 she changed shoe sponsor. In February in XL-Galan, Stockholm she ran for Adidas and in March in Carlsbad (CA, USA) she had her first official competition in Nike dress in the 5k-race, where she with small margin missed the world record. The change of sponsor is associated with the change of manager – from Dutch Jos Hermens (Global Sports Communication) to Swedish Ulf Saletti. The manager change happened a few month before the sponsor change. Saletti is meeting director at Stockholm XL-Galan where she on 19 February 2015 repeated the achievement from the year before by setting a world record, now at 5000 meter with 14:18.86.

Dibaba won the women's 5000m at the 2015 Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, in a then-personal best time of 14:19.76. She then went on to win the 5000m at the Diamond League Meet Areva in Paris on July 4 in a new personal best time of 14:15:41. This was her fifth 5000 meter run under 14:30. Only four days later, in Barcelona, she set a new African record for the 1500m of 3:54.11 (video), virtually single handedly running the fastest 1500 in the world in 18 years and the ninth fastest of all time. Six of the eight fastest times ahead of her occurred in two races at the 1993 Chinese National Games, where much of the running community believes the communist government was sponsoring a doping scheme in the days before serious drug testing was required. On 17 July 2015 in Monaco, Dibaba broke the 1500m world record, which had previously been considered near-unbreakable, in a time of 3:50:07.

At the World Championships in Beijing, she was the World Champion in the 1500 m and claimed the bronze medal in the 5000 m event.

She was named the female IAAF World Athlete of the Year for 2015.

2016

In February 2016, Dibaba competed in Stockholm’s Globen Galan meeting. She ran the indoor mile in 4 minutes and 13.31 seconds, breaking Doina Melinte's 26-year-old world record of 4:17.14, which had been set in 1990. In April she pulled out of the Dubai Athletics President’s Cup 10,000m Olympic qualifier race due to an injury in her left foot. In a track meet in Barcelona on June 30, she failed to finish a 5000m race due to an injury. She was removed from the track in a wheelchair.

2017

Dibaba finished 12th in the 1500m at the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

Personal bests