Faith Kipyegon World Records: How She Rewrote the 1500m & 5000m. Image: Imago

Discover how Faith Kipyegon made history by not just conquering the 1500m and 5000m but doing it by breaking multiple world records.

Faith Kipyegon is considered the greatest female middle-distance runner of all-time thanks to the numerous titles and world records in the course of her career.

Kipyegon has grown from a young and shy 16-year-old, who ran barefoot in her first international race in 2010, to a global superstar that is now an inspiration to millions of women across the world.

Since that race in Bydgoszcz, Poland at that year’s World Cross-Country Championships, Kipyegon has grown in leaps and bounds, seamlessly graduating from junior to senior and going on to dominate the women’s 1,500m race like never seen before.

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Before she graduated into senior, Kipyegon had won five junior titles in Cross-Country, World Junior and World Youth Championships and it was now a question of if she would translate that into the senior ranks.

It was not easy at the start, her first World Championships being in Moscow, Russia in 2013 where she had an impressive 1,500m debut as she finished fifth before improving to second place in Beijing, China two years later.

By then, she had clinched a Commonwealth title a year before but the silver in Beijing was her first medal in a major championship as a senior.

That set the tone for what was to come as at the 2016 Rio Olympics, her first appearance at the Games, Kipyegon floored favourite Genzebe Dibaba to claim gold following a remarkable finishing kick.

For those who thought it was a one-off, a shocker was on the way as Kipyegon went on to dominate her discipline, winning her first world title in London in 2017. What made this victory more special is that Faith Kipyegon beat a stacked field that had Jenny Simpson, Caster Semenya, Laura Muir and Sifan Hassan.

She would take a maternity break in 2018 and returned in time for the 2019 World Championships in Doha, where she won silver but two years later, in Eugene, she was back on the winner’s podium.

Between 2019 and 2022, Kipyegon had been showing signs of a world record but she always fell short. She ran 3:51.07, the fourth fastest time in history then, at the 2021 Florence Diamond League, and at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics that year, she won her second title in a new Olympics record of 3:53.11, lowering the previous time that had stood for 33 years.

Having been the first female athlete to win four global titles over the distance with her world title in 2022, Kipyegon felt that something was still missing and she could show it in Diamond League races like in Monaco where she came within 0.3 s of Dibaba’s world record with 3:50.37.

The year 2023 proved to be the turning point for Faith Kipyegon as she finally added on her CV the only thing missing, a world record. This came in June that year at the Florence Diamond League where she ran an astonishing 3:49.11 to become the first woman in history to break the 3:50 barrier while lowering Dibaba’s world record of 3:50.07.

In Florence, she hit 800 in 2:04.1 and was sensational over the final two laps, running her last 800 in 2:00.6, last 400 in 58.81, and last 200 in 29.2. The entire race field congratulated and embraced her after her lap of honour.

Exactly one week later at the Paris Diamond League, Faith Kipyegon was at it again, making it two world records in seven days as she ran to a shock 5,000m world record in just her third race over the distance, lowering Letesenbet Gidey’s mark of 14:06.62 set in 2020 to 14:05.20.

That record was later broken by Gudaf Tsegay, who ran 14:00.21 at the 2023 Prefontaine Classic.

But the Kenyan did not relent as in July that year, just before the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, she smashed yet another world record, running 4:07.64 in the mile, breaking Sifan Hassan’s world record of 4:12.33 which had stood since 2019 in Monaco.

That made Kipyegon the overwhelming favourite to win both 1,500m and 5,000m titles in Budapest and she did just that, winning two gold medals after running 3:54.87 and 14:53.88 respectively.

The year 2024 started slowly for Faith Kipyegon, who missed the early months of the season with an injury, but in her first competitive race at the Paris Diamond League in July, she smashed her own 1,500m world record, clocking 3:49.0 to shave off seven hundredths of a second from the previous mark.

That was just before the Paris 2024 Olympics where she won silver in 5,000m before making history as the first woman to win three straight Olympic 1,500m titles. She did it in style yet again, breaking her own Olympics record by running 3:51.29.

Having done everything there is to achieve in her specialty, Faith Kipyegon decided to stretch the limit in 2025 with an audacious attempt to run the mile under four minutes dubbed Breaking-4.

The event, akin to Eliud Kipchoge’s INEOS 1:59 Challenge, saw Faith Kipyegon aided by male and female pacemakers and armed with a special vest as well as super shoes, but she was unsuccessful as she fell 6.91 seconds short of the barrier with a time of 4:06.91 in Paris in June.

But the disappointment did not weigh heavily on Faith Kipyegon as less than two weeks later, she broke her own 1,500m world record for the third time, shaving off 0.36 seconds by clocking 3:48.68, to become the first woman to break the 3:49 barrier.

Still very much in her prime, Kipyegon is not done and more records and medals will likely come her way soon as she continues to add chapters to this remarkable story.