Olympic champion Joshua Cheptegei has won the elite men’s race while his compatriot Sarah Chelangat bagged the women’s title at the World 10K Bengaluru 2025 on Sunday. Joshua Cheptegei and Sarah Chelangat were the first athletes from Uganda to take home the TCS World 10K titles.
The contest between the Indian athletes saw Abhishek Pal and Sanjivani Jadhav take the top spots in the men’s and women’s races, respectively. Sarah Chelangat, a Paris 2024 Olympian and a double gold medallist at the 2018 Youth Olympics, broke away from the rest of the runners after the first two kilometres and maintained the lead thereafter. 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 Kenya’s Cintia Chepngenoa and Ethiopians Guteni Shanko and Asmarech Anley. The gap started widening thereafter as Sarah never 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.
“When we were running, I felt the pace was a bit slow,” Sarah said. “I thought, why don’t I push and try to finish in first position? I came in feeling confident and believing I must win the race”.
Unlike the women, the men’s runners engaged in a keen battle. In the first phase of the race, a group of a dozen runners ran together. Midway, the lead bunch reduced to six as Tanzania’s Gabriel Geay led the runners at 14:01.
With their mark at 5K seeming slower, they did not show any trend to break the event record. They exchanged the lead among themselves in the next few kilometres.
Five men, including Joshua, crossed the 8K mark together in 22:35 with Kenya’s Vincent Nyamongo lagging six seconds behind.
With the finish fast approaching, Joshua increased his tempo as did Eritrean teenager Saymon Tesfagiorgis Amanuel. The 17-year-old Saymon has already clocked the Eritrean best in 10K (27:10) while finishing second at Lille just last month.
Realising the threat from Saymon Tesfagiorgis Amanuel, Joshua ran all-out in the final stages to finish first in 27:53.
Saymon took the second spot two seconds later. At the same time, Kenyan Vincent Lagat sprinted to third position in 28:02 and Geay finished fourth at 28:03.
“Coming in as the favourite also puts a lot of pressure, especially when you have a lot of experience”, Johua revealed after the race. “If you look at my personal best, I am the fastest on the track, but that was a long time ago.
“When you look at guys like Vincent, Gabriel and young boys like Saymon, it’s a tough competition. Besides running for the time you have to run for the position
“I’ve noticed the young boys were very aggressive in the race today. This is world-class running. My advice to younger runners is, patience pays; it may be painful, but it always pays”, he added.
