Aisha Praught Leer, photo by Mike Deering for The Shoe Addicts
Over the final water jump, Aisha Praught Leer kept her cool, and passed Celiphine Chespol, to take her first major championship title. Aisha Praught Leer ran well in the World Indoors in Birmingham, and now, six weeks later, a gold in the steeplechase. Great job for Aisha. Asbel Kiprop tweeted the following about Aisha’s paradigm changing victory!
Here’s Justin Lagat’s commentary on the women’s steeplechase:
It doesn’t seem to be going well for Kenyan fans on the fourth day of athletics at the Commonwealth Games
Aisha Praught of Jamaica did cause a huge upset to the Kenyans today in the women’s 3000m Steeplechase race.
Aisha Praught Leer, photo by Mike Deering for The Shoe Addicts
Despite the Kenyans taking silver and bronze medals in the steeplechase race, the fact that it is now the fourth day of athletics at the Games and still they haven’t won any gold medal doesn’t augur well for a successful performance at the Gold Coast Games. The women’s 3000m steeplechase was one event that Kenyans had won a gold medal during the 2014 Games in Glasgow, the women’s 1500m being the other one that has already been lost. This could mean that Kenya is already two gold medals behind their last performance at the Games. Not forgetting that there is also one other event; the women’s 800m race which will be also very hard for Kenyans to defend their Glasgow gold medal.
If there was one race that the Kenyans were so certain of winning a gold medal, it was the women’s 3000m steeplechase. In fact, the pre-race talk was on whether it was going to be a clean 1-2-3 sweep on the podium. But, that saying about not counting chicks before they hatch became true when little known Aisha Praught from Jamaica suddenly appeared at the front of the race with four laps to go and started giving the Kenyans a hard race. The pre-race favorite, Celliphine Chespol had tried to respond to the threat of the Jamaican by breaking away from the rest of the field to safe the gold medal, and for a while seemed to be succeeding, but appeared to have overdone it when she started to struggle just after the bell and Praught slowly began to close in on her.
At the final water jump, Praught was already just at the back of the helpless Chespol before overtaking her at the final barrier. There was no reaction from Chespol as she seemed more concerned with getting to finish the race at that point rather than resisting Praught who went ahead to grab the gold medal from her in 9:21.00. Chespol settled for the silver medal in 9:22.61 followed by Purity Kirui for third place in 9:25.74.
The early stages of the race had appeared to be going well for the Kenyans. Purity Kirui had taken to the front just after the gun followed closely by Genevieve Lacaze of Australia. Chespol had momentarily remained at the back of the field, but slowly moved towards the front and by the 1000m mark all the three Kenyans were abreast at the front. It was at that point that more Kenyan fans began entertaining the thoughts of a 1-2-3 finish for Kenya. But, that was only until Praught moved into the mix with four laps to go and everything changed from there.
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Since 2013, Justin Lagat has written for RunBlogRun. His weekly column is called A view from Kenya. Justin writes about the world of Kenyan athletics on a weekly basis and during championships, provides us additional insights into the sport.
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by Justin Lagat
