Chesang finishes 8th as another Olympic record is set in Women's Olympics Marathon

Uganda’s Stella Chesang clocked 2:26:01 to finish 8th as the Women’s Marathon ended in Paris on Sunday.

Chesang was part of a three-man Ugandan women's team that included Rebecca Cheptegei and Mercyline Chelangat, who also managed to finish the grueling race in season-best times of 2:32:14 and 2:39:40 respectively.

Chesang, the most decorated on the Ugandan team over the long-distance races, had a relatively good race and was among the top five in the opening ten kilometres.

But she dropped to 14th at the beginning of the hilly section but gained a position at the 20km mark.

By the 35km mark, she had regained another four places and regained one more with 2kms to go, to finish in a respectable 8th.

Cheptegei improved her season’s best by 1.94 seconds in finishing 48th out of the 91 participants, 11 of whom did not finish.

Chelangat finished 69th as she made her debut in the Olympic marathon.

Ethiopian-Dutch runner Sifan Hassan won the event in an Olympic record time of 2:22:55. This was her third medal in the Paris Olympics having earlier won bronze from the 5000 and 10000m races.

She sprinted away in the last meters of the race to beat Ethiopian Tigst Assefa and Kenyan Hellen Obiri who finished second and third to the gold.

Team Uganda is sponsored to the games by the government of Uganda through the NCS with additional support from Plascon.