2017 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 5000 metres

In the first turn of the final, Kalkidan Gezahegne (BHR) started quickly to take a two-metre lead, covered quickly by 10,000 metre champ Almaz Ayana, revealing her intent to cover moves. Hellen Obiri (KEN) moved to Ayana's shoulder. Then Sifan Hassan ran around the crowd to take the lead. In control of the front, Hassan didn't speed up, she slowed the pace to a virtual walk. Everyone obliged until the last few metres when Ayana broke free off the front. They passed the first lap in 1:21.77. Ayana's second lap of 1:18.98 didn't improve the pace much, but it separated all three Ethiopians and all three Kenyans to the front. Gezahegne rushed forward to take another temporary lead before fading back through the pack for good. From there it was Ayana setting the pace, but a pack of others, led by Hellen Obiri (KEN) were determined not to let her get away. Ayana accelerated but Obiri stuck to her, creating a ten-second breakaway on the pack led by Hassan. With 300 metres to go, Obiri took off at a pace Ayana could not match, taking the pace from 68 second laps to the last 200 metres in under 30 seconds. Running even faster, Hasan separated from the pack and set off in chase of catching Ayana for silver but arriving two seconds too late.

Before the competition, the records were as follows:[2]

Record	Perf.	Athlete	Nat.	Date	Location
World	14:11.15	Tirunesh Dibaba	ETH	6 Jun 2008	Oslo, Norway
Championship	14:38.59	Tirunesh Dibaba	ETH	13 Aug 2005	Helsinki, Finland
World leading	14:18.37	Hellen Onsando Obiri	KEN	8 Jun 2017	Rome, Italy
African	14:11.15	Tirunesh Dibaba	ETH	6 Jun 2008	Oslo, Norway
Asian	14:28.09	Bo Jiang	CHN	23 Oct 1997	Shanghai, China
NACAC	14:38.92	Shannon Rowbury	USA	9 Sep 2016	Brussels, Belgium
South American	15:18.85	Simone da Silva	BRA	20 May 2011	São Paulo, Brazil
European	14:22.34	Sifan Hassan	NED	13 Jul 2018	Rabat, Marruecos
Oceanian	14:45.93	Kim Smith	NZL	11 Jul 2008	Rome, Italy

The following records were set at the competition:[3]

Record	Perf.	Athlete	Nat.	Date
Colombian	15:26.18	Muriel Coneo	COL	10 Aug 2017

The standard to qualify automatically for entry was 15:22.00.[4]

The event schedule, in local time (UTC+1), is as follows:[5]