Ugandan Sarah Chelangat emerges victorious at the TCS World 10K Bengaluru
It was a day of delight for Ugandan Sarah Chelangat as she took home the top prize in the TCS World 10K, a World Athletics Gold Label Road Race, held on Sunday. Incidentally, she is the first woman from Uganda to take home the TCS World 10K title, along with a prize of USD 26,000.
As many as eight of the best women with personal best timings faster than the event records set their foot on the Bengaluru roads went the race was flagged off a 5.30amIndian time.
However, Sarah had a different strategy in mind as she broke away from the rest of the runners after the first two kilometers and maintained the lead thereafter.
Sarah could easily be mistaken for a Kenyan, as Chelangat is a popular family name among them. She increased her pace once she parted from the rest of the field and passed through the halfway mark at 15:23.
At that stage, it was 20 seconds faster than that of pre-race favourite, Kenya’s Cintia Chepngeno as well as the Ethiopian duo of Guteni Shanko and Asmarech Anley. The gap started widening bigger and bigger thereafter, as Sarah had not looked back to see where her rivals were at any point in the race.
With no one to push her, Sarah had to run her race and missed out on the event record by well over 30 seconds. She touched the tape at 31:07. Cintia had to fight it out with Guteni for the runners-up position, as less than two seconds separated them at the finish (32:04 and 32:06 respectively).
It was a big break for Sarah, a double gold medalist in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games and a 2024 Paris Olympic finalist in 10,000m. With age on her side (23), the Ugandan runner is expected to achieve more.
After a post-race press briefing, Sarah said, ‘When we were running, I felt the pace was a bit slow. I thought, why don’t I push and try to finish in the first position. I came in feeling confident and believing I must win the race’.
