The Ethiopian-born, Dutch citizen, Sifyan Hassan, has stunned the world again with her brilliant performance in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In all three races that she competed in, she came out victorious. She won a gold medal in the 5,000m and 10,000m race. Additionally, she received a bronze medal in the 1,500m race, marking her the first athlete in history to win three medals in a single Olympic Game.
“I have trained every single moment thinking about this for four years,” Hassan said after her victory run. “It was a relief.”
While Hassan may have shocked the world with her unprecedented feats in Tokyo, those who have followed her know that this is just her latest feat, with perhaps more to come. The 28-year-old started to gain international recognition just after her teen years, winning the 1,500m race at the Nijmegen Global Athletics and the Golden Spike Ostrave.
In 2013, Hassan was runner-up in the 2013 IAAF Diamond League in the 1,500m race at Athletissima in Switzerland and came in 3rd place at DN Galan in the 3,000m race in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. By this point, she was considered to be the fourth-fastest runner in the world. And by the end of 2013, she became a Dutch citizen, qualifying her to represent the Netherlands.
After becoming a Dutch citizen, she ran in the 2013 European Cross Country Championships, winning a gold medal and helping her team to make it to 3rd place in overall ranking. And as a Dutch citizen, it didn’t take long to mark her place in history. Within a year after citizenship, in 2014 she broke the Dutch record at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix in the 1,500m race with a time of 4:05:34 minutes.
All of Hassan’s accomplishments didn’t come without some obstacles and critics. In 2019, Head Coach Alberto Salazar, was banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency who says Salazar trafficked testosterone, infused a prohibited amount of L-carnitine, and tried to tamper with doping controls. And along with Salazar, Hassan’s name was mentioned just after her greatest accomplishment in her career at the time, winning two gold medals in both the 1,500m and 10,000m races at the Doha World Championships in 2019, the first to ever win two gold medals in a single event.
Hassan was flabbergasted at the accusations. “I was so angry, and I could not talk to anyone,” Hassan said. “I just ran all out. That hard work can’t be beaten in anything.”
Since what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Hassan came out stronger than ever, as she made history with unprecedented gold medals in Doha and in Tokyo. She’ll only be 31 by the next Olympics in Paris in 2024, so there’s still plenty of room for more history-making.
