Once an Ethiopian asylum seeker, the Dutch distance running great won her third medal of the Paris Olympics in a thrilling finish to the women’s marathon.
Sifan Hassan completed her mission impossible with a gruelling women’s marathon win on the sun-baked streets of Paris on the last day of the Olympics, giving the games a dramatic ending of her own.
With the final track and field medal of the games up for grabs on Sunday and with sporting powerhouses grappling for dominance, it was the once-Ethiopian refugee in the Netherlands who gave the Olympics a thrilling sprint finish to bag her third medal in Paris.
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Hassan had taken on what many considered to be a crazy gamble, competing in the 5,000m, the 10,000m and the marathon – the last two events just two days apart.
But in a scintillating sprint finish, Hassan overhauled Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa to take gold by three seconds in an Olympic record of 2hr 22min 55sec. Assefa took silver in 2:22.58 and Kenya’s Hellen Obiri claimed bronze in 2:23.10.
On Friday, Hassan had taken bronze in the 10,000m in the Stade de France after coming away with a bronze in the 5,000m.
She fell to the ground on the blue carpet in front of the golden dome of Les Invalides memorial complex in the heart of Paris before grabbing a Dutch flag to celebrate an extraordinary achievement.
“It was not easy,” said Hassan, 31. “It was so hot, but I was feeling OK. I’ve never pushed myself through to the finish line as I did today.”
“Every moment in the race I was regretting that I ran the 5,000m and 10,000m. I was telling myself if I hadn’t done that, I would feel great today.
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“From the beginning to the end, it was so hard. Every step of the way. I was thinking, ‘Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?’
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‘With hardship will be ease’
Back home at Eindhoven Atletiek, an athletics club in the Netherlands, young hopefuls are put through their paces, dreaming of emulating their most famous member – double Olympic champion Sifan Hassan.
More than a decade ago, Hassan – a young asylum seeker from Ethiopia – embarked on a journey that would lead to history at the Tokyo Olympics with two golds and a marathon championship in Paris.
“We immediately saw she was a talented athlete. Even a blind horse could see she would be a good runner,” said Ad Peeters, president of the Eindhoven Atletiek coaching team.
But Hassan’s first appearance came about as pure chance and in slightly farcical circumstances, explained Peeters, also a middle-distance runner who competed with her in the early days.
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Hassan tagged along with a friend representing the club at a 1,000-metre race nearby – and decided to join in.
“But 1,000 metres is two and a half laps of the track. They hadn’t realised that, so they actually tried to finish at the starting line,” laughed Peeters, 58.
“So that’s how we got to know her. We could already see she was a talented athlete at that time, but she wasn’t really a runner then yet,” he told AFP.
One of Hassan’s favourite mottos, taken from the Quran, is “with hardship will be ease”, and her formative years were anything but easy.
Sifan Hassan is overcome by emotions after crossing the finish line to win the gold medal at the end of the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics [Vadim Ghirda/AP]
From asylum seeker to triple Olympic champion
Born in Adama, southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, Hassan was raised on a farm by her mother and grandmother. Aged 15, she left for the Netherlands. She has never explained why.
She was first housed in a centre for underaged asylum seekers in Zuidlaren, in the northern Netherlands. She told De Volkskrant daily that she cried there every day.
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“I was like a flower that got no sun,” she said.
She finally arrived in Eindhoven to do a nursing course and fell in with other Ethiopians, some of whom were members of the local athletics club.
She took some time to “de-ice”, as Peeters puts it, describing her as a “shy girl” in the shadow of some of the more established Ethiopian runners.
Hassan herself has recalled training so hard “that my leg was bleeding”, but Peeters tells a slightly different story.
“I actually don’t think she was lazy, but it was not always easy to get her to training on time,” he remembered with a chuckle.
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“She didn’t yet have the discipline to do the training. But I also do not want to underestimate what it’s like to be here as a youngster, as a 17-year-old girl, to be lonely, uncertain about your future,” said Peeters.
The club worked on her technique. She was clearly a “natural” runner, but “her legs and arms were going everywhere” said the coach.
Peeters feels the club’s main role in Hassan’s success came as much off the track as on it – helping her navigate life as a solo teenage asylum seeker.
“We made sure she did not do the wrong things, neither in training, nor in her personal life. We kept her safe, picked her up by car to go to training, took her to competitions,” he said.
“We kept her in one piece, basically.”
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Progress came quickly, as did a Dutch passport. The Dutch athletics coaches recognised her talent and sent her to the elite Olympic training centre in Papendal.
The rest is history: at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Hassan became the first athlete ever to win medals (two gold, one bronze) in the 1,500m, 5,000m, and 10,000m.
In Paris, she attempted the even more arduous combination of 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon.
Despite Hassan’s success, her Eindhoven links have stayed strong, said Peeters. The club helped her financially at the start of her career and she would often return for training.
Hassan remains a club member despite now living and training in the United States, and Peeters collects her fan mail.
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Nothing stops the training, he said, while admitting that the club would gather round the bar to cheer on their famous alumna in Paris.
“We don’t stop our training for football, but we do for Sifan.”
Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands overtook Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa in a thrilling sprint finish to the women’s Olympic marathon [Dar Yasin/AP]