By Jack Butler
Ethiopian Genzebe Dibaba pulled away from the field halfway through the race. Her biggest competitor wasn’t any other runner; it was the clock.
In Friday’s 5,000-meter race at the Prefontaine Classic, Dibaba was pushing to break the world record time of 14 minutes, 11.15 seconds set by her sister Tirunesh.
The clock won as Dibaba finished first with a time of 14:25.22. Kenya’s Lilian Kasait Rengeruk placed second at 14:36.80, while the Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan finished third with a time of 14:41.24.
Molly Huddle was the best from the United States with a time of 15:09.09, which placed her eighth.
Rengeruk was just behind Dibaba through the first 2,500 meters. Dibaba held a three-second lead when the two runners crossed the halfway point. Five hundred meters later, Dibaba was ahead by six seconds.
The winner was never in doubt, but Dibaba was not satisfied with the result.
“I’m happy I won, but I’m not happy about the time,” Dibaba said through a translator.
Her time is far off her personal best of 14:15.41 set in the summer of 2015. It six seconds slower than the Prefontaine meet record that she set in 2015.
“Things didn’t go as planned because the pacemakers didn’t do well, so I’m disappointed by that,” Dibaba said. “I was doing a 69- and 68-second lap and I was within my time, but it’s just the pacemakers didn’t help me much. I’m not happy about that.”
The pacemakers were Kenyan Mary Kuria through 1,000 meters and Swede Meraf Bahta through 2,600 meters. They were both running 400-meter splits of roughly 70 seconds, apparently too slow for Dibaba’s taste.
For Huddle, the race was slow as well.
She was disappointed with her time and finish. It was never about grabbing a victory, given Dibaba’s performance, but she was “frustrated because you never want to waste an opportunity to run fast.”
Huddle is the American record holder in the 5,000 meters with a time of 14:42.64 set in 2014. Last year, Huddle set the American record in the 10,000 meters while at the Olympics.
The race didn’t play out in a way that Huddle prefers.
“I really need to be pulled by a pack, and it just wasn’t happening,” Huddle said. “The pack I was in, we were all just looking at each other. No one wanted to lead a hard pace. In hindsight, I wish Emily [Sisson] and I just went to the front and tried to get it going.”
Huddle is not worried about her poor time. She said she felt slow, in part because she is adjusting to coming down from altitude.
For many of the runners, this is the first race of the season, so it is no surprise that the clock claimed many victories today.
