Berlin Marathon: who is Tigst Assefa, new female world record holder?

On Sunday 24 September, the 26-year-old Ethiopian runner wrote track and field history by breaking the women’s world record at the Berlin marathon: she finished the race in 2h11:53, a time two minutes slower than that of her predecessor Brigid Kosgei (2h14 : 04 during the Chicago Marathon in 2019). Such progress has not been seen since 1983.

Who is Tigst Assefa?

The 26-year-old athlete said she was pleasantly surprised by her score: “ I didn’t expect to run so fast, to go under 2h12 .” A performance which, however, owes nothing to chance and is the result of a “ hard work “.

The athlete first cut his teeth in the 800 meters, and set a personal best in this discipline in July 2014, in Lausanne, clocking a time of 1:59.24.

During the 2016 Rio Olympic Games she qualified but failed to get out of the series. An injury to her Achilles tendon then forced her to leave the track to switch to the road, with her first races in 2018 on the 10km. She slowly moved towards the half marathon and set the record of 1:07.28 in Germany in 2022. A time that does not place her in the 50 best performances of this season.

The pandemic marks a pause in his career. Tigst Assefa decides not to run and returns during his first marathon in March 2022 in Riyadh, which he completes in 2h34:01. A great performance followed in Berlin in September 2022, where he caused a sensation during his second marathon with a time of 2h15:37. Even then it was the third period of history.

With Sunday’s triumph, the athlete demonstrates his meteoric progress: in the space of 18 months, he will have improved his marathon time by more than 22 minutes.

The athlete is therefore among the great favorites for the Olympic gold in Paris (2024). As long as you master this route, which is much hillier than Berlin.