New Delhi: Sifan Hassan seems so frail that she often seems to flirt with a tumble while racing. Thin as a reed, she tips the scales at barely 50kg, and the Dutchwoman has a history of falls. She momentarily raised that prospect on Saturday in the finishing stages of the Paris Olympics women’s marathon.
She had stuck to a bunch of around 10 lead runners, and with the final kilometre of the tough route through Paris ahead, the gold medal battle had come down to two athletes of Ethiopian origin. Tigst Assefa, the world record holder fighting for the Ethiopian flag, was going to make it as difficult as she could for a rival who sought asylum in The Netherlands as a teenager. Sifan tried to dart past to the right of Tigst, who quickly blocked the path.
As the Dutch runner tried to move past on the left at the last sharp turn before the finish line came into her sight, Tigst quickly came across. For a second, it appeared Sifan would be slammed into the barriers heaving with fans. But Sifan proved she is all steel, slipping through to go on and win the race in an Olympic record time of two hours, 22 minutes, 55 seconds.
She had beaten Tigst to the gold by three seconds. It ended a barely believable 10 days of her Olympics engagement – she had run four races, including two on the track – with the ultimate high. The Dutchwoman yelled in delight at the finish as the Paris fans, who lined up on both sides of the route in large number till the last runner finished, applauded.
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