Africa race walk champions Grace Wanjiru’s persistence has been key in securing tickets to major championships for close to a decade, the veteran walker will be on the road today to test the grueling Doha heat in women’s 20km walk race final.
Wanjiru, 40, will be Kenya's sole representative in the event. Despite dominating the continental championships having won six African Champion titles and a Commonwealth Games bronze medal from India in 2010, she is yet to podium at IAAF World Championships.
At the last African championships in Asaba, Nigeria in 2018, she lost the title to her compatriot Emily Ngii.
Meanwhile, Wanjiru will face Ecuadorian Glenda Morejon who has produced one of the biggest breakthrough performances of the year at 11:30pm.
In her first race over 20km, the Ecuadorian race walker sped to victory in 1:25:29 – the fastest time ever by an U20 athlete – to audaciously defeat a field that included Olympic champion and world record-holder Liu Hong and world champion Yang Jiayu in one of the best races ever in terms of depth.
Now the 19-year-old wants to do it all again in Doha.
The precocious World U18 champion has talent by the bucket load, but the conditions in Doha will be a lot tougher than in La Coruna. Not only will the temperatures be higher, the field will be stronger and the overall experience could be more daunting.
Should she, quite literally, take all that in her stride, Morejon could become the youngest women’s world 20km race walk champion in history and Ecuador’s first world medallist in a women’s event.
She could also become the first athlete with a 2000 birth year to win a senior global title.
In the meantime, the Ingebrigtsen family’s dream of having three brothers in the 5,000m World Championships final remained alive on Friday after Jakob, the youngest of the trio, won an appeal after being disqualified in his first heat.
The 19-year-old Norwegian, European champion last year in the 1,500 and 5,000m, finished fourth, enough to secure a place in the final, but was subsequently disqualified for “stepping inside the rail.”
But after an appeal by the Norway team, Ingebrigtsen’s result was reinstated.
