PARIS — Sifan Hassan ended her mammoth week with a gold in the women’s marathon on Sunday, completing her remarkable treble bid to medal in the 5,000-metres, 10,000-metres and marathon.
The one other athlete to have achieved the feat was the great Czech runner Emil Zátopek, who swept all three golds in Helsinki in 1952 when distance running was vastly different than it is today.
The Dutch athlete broke the Olympic record in the marathon with a timing of 2:22:55.
Hassan entered the race having already run 50 laps of the Stade de France track this week, earning bronze medals in the women’s 5,000 and 10,000-metres — the latter coming just 36 hours before the 26-mile race.
The 31-year-old had spoken all week of her fear of the Olympics’ longest race, even thinking about the race while she competed on the track. “I’m freaking scared for the marathon,” she said on Monday. She quoted Muhammad Ali in a post to Instagram on Saturday, saying: “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”
She had little to fear, though, and produced a gutsy performance that saw her dig deep to stay with the leading pack on the many steep hills of the Paris course.
Hassan stepped it up a gear once the course flattened and ended with an all-out sprint alongside Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa and Kenya’s Hellen Obiri. First, Obiri fell away, unable to keep up, then Hassan bumped shoulders with Assefa as the Dutch athlete took a racing line through the winding finish to become the Olympic champion.
It means she has now won Olympic medals ranging from the 1,500 metres to the marathon in a stunning show of both track speed and endurance. At Tokyo 2020, Hassan completed another treble, winning bronze in the 1,500-metres, as well as the 5,000 and 10,000- metres.
The Paris course was the same brutal route used for Saturday’s men’s race. It began outside Paris’ city hall, Hotel de Ville, and passed along sights such as Palais Garnier opera house, Place Vendome, the Louvre museum, the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Versailles.
It ended with Hassan bolting down the scenic home straight in the shadow of the Esplanade des Invalides.