Betty Chelangat won Kenya’s first gold medal in the women’s 3,000m at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Cali, Colombia, while compatriot Nancy Cherop finished third for bronze.

Chelangat produced a powerful display to take the first gold medal of the championships, winning the race with a killer kick on the back straight, moving away from her two pursuers: Ethiopia’s Tsiyon Abebe and compatriot Nancy Cherop who settled for bronze.

Chelangat stayed strong all the way to the finish, crossing the line in 9:01.03 ahead of Abebe (9:03.85) and Cherop (9:05.98). After an army-style salute to the crowd, Chelangat dropped to her knees, raised her arms in celebration, then clasped them in thankful prayer.

But she was just as quick to rise to her feet and take off with her teammate for a lap of honour that looked almost as fast as her last 300m, the effort clearly not taking much out of her.

Chelangat and Cherop kept their cards close to their chests for the majority of the first laps of the race, staying in the middle of the track.

They made their move with four laps remaining, beginning to separate from the rest of the pack, with Ethiopia’s Abebe trailing in their wake.

They injected pace into the race with two laps to go, with Chelangat leading and Cherop remaining second, and Abebe not fading and sticking on their shoulders like a tick.

Chelangat pushed the pace at the bell and began to close the gap between herself and Cherop, and by the time she reached the backstraight, she had established a gap of nearly 50m.

Cherop was tiring down the home stretch, and Abebe took advantage to storm past her into second place, but she couldn’t catch Chelangat, who had used some devastating pace to secure gold.

Kenya also won two medals, gold and silver, at last year’s Nairobi edition.