3000 m (indoor), women

What to remember

Fifteen laps of a 200 m indoor track: that is the indoor 3000 m, which Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba ran in 8 min 16.60 s on February 6, 2014, at the XL Galan meeting in Stockholm. Her average speed was 21.748 km/h.

The 3000 m sits on the border between middle and long distance, and its classification is debated. For women it was long one of the core distances of the Olympics and the World Championships, before the 5000 m replaced it at the 1995 World Championships and the 1996 Games. It has, however, been on the World Indoor Championships programme since they began in 1987.

Dibaba made the distance her own: world indoor 3000 m champion in 2014, 2016 and 2018, she also broke the indoor world records for the mile and the 5000 m. Outdoors, she was world 1500 m champion in 2015 in Beijing and won silver over the same distance at the 2016 Rio Olympics.