Olympic 5,000 silver medalist, Helen Obiri starts favourite in the 3,000m race at the Indoor Grand Prix finals in Birmingham today.
Obiri has been in outstanding form recently on both the track and cross country. Her only loss of the winter came in Karlsruhe, where Britain’s Laura Muir beat her to second place in 3,000m. However, she still has a healthy lead on the points standings.
With Muir contesting the 1,000m in Birmingham, Obiri’s toughest challenge will come from world indoor 1,500m champion Dutch Sifan Hassan, world indoor 3000m bronze medallist, Shannon Rowbury (USA) and the world indoor 1,500m silver medalist Dawit Seyaum (Ethiopia).
Obiri won the 2012 world indoor title in 3,000m in Istanbul, Turkey and will be looking for her second global title at next year’s World Indoor Championships.
After Birmingham, however, Obiri will turn her focus on the World athletics Championship in London, where she hopes to run the 5,000m.
The situation in the men’s 1,500m is equally close as Kenyan duo Bethwell Birgen and Vincent Kibet are within touching distance of the series victory. Today, they will line up alongside Australia’s Ryan Gregson and USA’s duo of Ben Blankenship and Garrett Heath.
Organisers will be hoping that multiple world and Olympic champion Mo Farah will make the home fans happy when he competes in 5,000m—the final event of the afternoon—where he is likely to target his own European indoor record of 13:10.60. Farah has set numerous national and European records—and even a world best—in Birmingham, but in his most recent race he finished a well-beaten seventh at the Great Edinburgh cross-country.
Farah, however, has always been more comfortable on the track than in mud and will be buoyed by the memories of his victories at the 2016, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2009 and 2007 editions of this meeting. His toughest opposition in this year’s race could come from Asian record-holder, Albert Rop of Bahrain and Morocco’s Olympic steeplechase fourth-place finisher Soufiane El Bakkali.