Women’s 10K
It is a given that a Kenyan would win the women’s 10 K at the Commonwealth Games. History shows that Kenya won from 1998 to 2014, and in 2014 it was a clean sweep of the medals with Joyce Chepkurui, Florence Kiplagat and Emily Chebet – three legends – taking the medals.
This year there were seven East Africans in the top ten, but Rose Davies was the surprise winner. The result was:
1 Rose Davies (Australia) 31:39.32
2 Diana Wanza (Kenya) 31.50.13
3 Florence Niyonkuru (Rwanda\) 31:55.47
Wanza had taken a significant lead, but Davies reeled her in and forged ahead.
In passing, there is a need to celebrate absent friends. It is a great disappointment for the home crowd that the 2022 champion, Eilish McColgan, had to withdraw with injury. The withdrawal came too late to stop her picture being all over the Glasgow 2026 publicity.
Rose was an excited winner: “I haven’t really processed it all yet, but at the moment I’m stoked. Diana went hard, so I was just hoping that she’d get tired and I could run her down. With three laps to go, I was close, so I thought, ‘You know, you can do it.’ I backed myself in the whole race. I’ve been training really well, and I’ve been racing really well, so I was just trying to bring my confidence into this race, and I did that. I think you always have to back yourself, and because it was so early on, I wasn’t feeling too bad at the pointy end of the race. So, I trusted my speed, and I’m glad I did. My confidence now for the 5K race will be really high. I don’t run 10Ks as often as 5Ks, so I think I’m more confident in the 5K just because I’m more used to it”.
On being told that the 10K is the only track event in which an Australian woman has never won a gold medal, she replied: “I’m so honored. I just found that out today too, so yeah, that’s so cool”.
And as she says the 5K is her stronger event, there could be more to come,
