Dutch runner Sifan Hassan has won the women’s marathon at the Paris Games, setting a new Olympic record. The 31-year-old finished the race on Sunday in 2 hours, 22 minutes and 55 seconds — with a gripping end to the finish line.
Hassan beat Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa by just three seconds, while Kenya’s Hellen Obiri who took home the bronze medal.
Speaking after her historic race, Hassan said she felt like she was dreaming and that she “couldn’t stop celebrating.”
“I only see people on the TV who are Olympic champions,” she said. “The marathon is something else, you know. When you do 42 kilometres in more than two hours and 20 minutes, then every single step you feel so hard and so painful.”
“When I finished, the whole moment was a release. It is unbelievable. I have never experienced anything like that. Even the other marathons I have run were not close to this.”
“I was feeling dizzy. I wanted to lie down. Then I thought, ‘I am the Olympic champion. How is this possible?’”
Hassan’s win on Sunday marks her third medal at this year’s Games. She has already won bronze medals at the 5000m and 10,000m races, making her the first woman in Olympic history to win in that unique combination of distance competitions within a Game.
Hassan was born in Ethiopia and moved to the Netherlands at 15. She was a determined, athletic student, training so hard she would end up injuring herself.
“I went for so long that my leg was bleeding,” she said in an interview with Olympics.com earlier this month, describing her first training sessions.
At the Rio Games in 2016, Hassan placed a disappointing fifth in the 1500m, a race she believed she could win. The disappointment saw her take two months away from running.
“It hurt me so much,” Hassan reflected this month. “I took seven showers to calm down and I wasn’t calmed down.”
“Can you imagine after Rio, when they asked me if I was going to become Olympic champion, I said, ‘nope!But I became two times [Olympic champion] and one time bronze [medallist]. That’s the reason I cannot predict my life, it’s a lot of lessons for me.”
“When I fell down, everything came into my head, a thousand things. I was like, ‘OK, I have to calm down, I can’t cry because I am already a success, I have to be a role model for people who have challenges.”
“Immediately, what I said was, ‘It could be worse. Did I lose my teeth? No. Did I lose my hand? No. I’m OK, I’m healthy, I have to be grateful. If you don’t give up, I know there are going to be bright and beautiful things.”
Her perseverance paid off. At the last Olympics in Tokyo, she ran the 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m, taking home two golds and a bronze. In 2023, she won the London marathon and the Chicago marathon.