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Olympic Games Women’s 10,000m and 5,000m champion Beatrice Chebet has set her eyes on the gold medal at the twentieth edition of the World Athletics Championships slated for Tokyo, Japan in September this year to cap his glittering career.

The 24-year-old Kenyan has been unstoppable since claiming a gold medal as a junior athlete in 2020 during the World U-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland when she made her winning introduction to the world with a stellar show in 5,000m.

Despite her decorated career on the track, road and cross-country, the Kericho- born athletics queen is yet to test victory as a senior athlete at the World Athletics championships-having competed on the big stage on two occasions.

Chebet, who is also the world record holder in women’s 10,000m (28:54.14) which she set in Eugine in May last year has only managed to grab a silver medal (Eugene 2022) and a bronze (Budapest 2023) at the championships. After showing the world her prowess on different platforms, she is eager to go to the Japanese capital in September and bring home the gold which she claims is the only thing missing from her medal room thus far.

“My target is to win a gold medal at the World Championships this year because I am yet to win that medal (gold) at the competition. I have a silver and a bronze medal. God willing, if I manage to achieve my target of getting a gold medal then I would have created a good profile as a good athletics career. I believe everything is possible because even when I was heading to Paris, I did not anticipate to win two gold medals or even to break the world record in women’s 5KM,” Chebet told People Sport.

It is not known yet whether she will race in her trademark 5,000m or move to women’s 10,000 or double as she did during last year’s Paris Olympics in France.

Chebet competed on home soil for the first time since June 2024 during the Olympic trials at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi. On Friday, under a scorching sun, she emerged victorious after clocking 5:54:1 in the 2KM race during the National Police Services Cross-Country championships at the Ngong Race Course, Nairobi.

She was coy on whether she will be aiming to break the world record in women’s 5,000m having smashed the 5KM Women-only Road race last December in Barcelona, Spain.

“For now, I cannot promise that but anything is possible. In athletics, sometimes it can be difficult to predict. You have the desire to attempt the record and it backfires like what I did in Zurich but sometimes a record can just come by naturally. Therefore, I just need to keep up with my training and if the body responds well then, we will see what happens.” Chebet added.

Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay is the current holder of the women’s 5,000m record with a time of 14:00.21. She swept away a four-month record of Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon of 14:05.20.