Joshua Cheptegei’s 5000m World Record at the Monaco Diamond League event held recently has been voted the World Athletics Moment of the Month (August).
The poll was conducted by World Athletics and Cheptegei, a Ugandan middle distance runner beat three other athletes to the gong.
The others athletes were; Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot, Norwegian Karsten Warholm and American Valerie Allman.
To vote the winner, World Athletics tweeted photos of the nominees, with winner determined on number of retweets.
Cheptegei’s photo received over 37,000 retweets, which was more than what the rest of nominees combined got.
Cheptegei has been humbled by this development and has lauded the social media family for voting him.
“I am so honored to be named as the winner of World Athletics moment of the month! Thanks to you all for the retweets that enabled me win this deserved recognition for the month of August. One love!” Cheptegei said in a tweet.
At the Monaco event, Cheptegei, 23, broke Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia) record by about two seconds with a winning time of 12 minutes 35.36 seconds to claim a career third world title. Bekele’s winning time was 12:37.35.
Also in February this year, Cheptegei broke the 5km road world record still in Monaco. This was his second world record.
His maiden world record was when he won the 10,000m world title in Doha last year.
The athlete who is eager to smash more records has resumed training after completing his mandatory quarantine period in his country home, Kapchorwa.
