Athletics at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's 10,000 metres

Ethiopia's Tirunesh Dibaba entered as the defending 2012 Olympic champion and Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya was the reigning 10,000 m World Champion at that point. However, it was Almaz Ayana who had the season-leading time of 30:07.00, the fastest time recorded in seven years for the distance and also her debut.[3]

At the start of the race the 37-woman field was led by Alice Aprot Nawowuna of Kenya. Nawowuna quickly increased the pace, turning the group of runners into a single file, and after five laps the leading group was reduced to eight: three Kenyans (Nawowuna, Cheruiyot and Betsy Saina), three Ethiopians (Almaz Ayana, Tirunesh Dibaba and Gelete Burka), Kenyan ex-pat Yasemin Can of Turkey and Molly Huddle of the United States. The pace remained high from that point on, unusual for an international championship. Huddle was the first to fall away from the pack, followed by Gelete Burka. With twelve laps remaining, Almaz Ayana suddenly took the lead from Nawowuna, disrupting a leading group that had already begun to lap the race's slower runners.[4]

Almaz Ayana continued the fast pace and even increased it, regularly running under 71 seconds per lap. Cheruiyot was the only other athlete near, though she was still some 15–20 metres behind. Almaz lapped all the runners from tenth downwards and completed the distance in 29:17.45,[4] knocking 14 seconds off Wang Junxia's 22-year-old record (which itself had stood twenty-two seconds faster than any athlete before that point). Cheruiyot was runner-up and less than a second outside of the old world record. Defending champion Tirunesh Dibaba won the bronze with the fourth fastest time ever and Nawowuna was also under half an hour to record the fifth fastest time ever in fourth place.[5][6]

In addition to Almaz Ayana's world and Olympic record time, a total of eight national records were broken at the competition. Molly Huddle's run of 30:13.17 in sixth place was the area record for the North, Central American and Caribbean region and number 17 of all time. In fifteenth place, just 5 weeks short of 43 years old, Jo Pavey set the Masters World Record at 31:33.44. Further down the field, only four of the top twenty athletes did not set personal bests.

The medals for the competition were presented by Mrs. Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, IOC member, and the gifts were presented by Lord Sebastian Coe, President of the International Association of Athletics Federations.

All times are Brasília Time (UTC−3).

Prior to the competition, the existing World and Olympic records were as follows.

World record	Wang Junxia (CHN)	29:31.78	Beijing, China	8 September 1993
Olympic record	Tirunesh Dibaba (ETH)	29:54.66	Beijing, China	15 August 2008
2016 World leading	Almaz Ayana (ETH)	30:07.00	Hengelo, Netherlands	29 June 2016

The following records were established during the competition:

Date	Event	Name	Nationality	Time	Record
12 August	Final	Almaz Ayana	Ethiopia	29:17.45	WR

The following national records were established during the competition:

Country	Athlete	Round	Time	Notes
Ethiopia	Almaz Ayana (ETH)	Final	29:17.45	WR, OR, AR
Kenya	Vivian Cheruiyot (KEN)	Final	29:32.53
United States	Molly Huddle (USA)	Final	30:13.17	AR
Sweden	Sarah Lahti (SWE)	Final	31:28.43
Burundi	Diane Nukuri (BDI)	Final	31:28.69
Greece	Alexi Pappas (GRE)	Final	31:36.16
Kyrgyzstan	Darya Maslova (KGZ)	Final	31:36.90
Uzbekistan	Sitora Hamidova (UZB)	Final	31:57.77