Genzebe Dibaba pulls out of Oslo Diamond League

By : AFP

Date: 7 June 2016 4:30pm WAT

Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba celebrates winning the final of the women's 1500 metres athletics event at the 2015 IAAF World Championships at the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium in Beijing on August 25, 2015. AFP PHOTO / OLIVIER MORIN

Ethiopia’s world 1500m champion Genzebe Dibaba has withdrawn from the Dream Mile at Thursday’s Diamond League meeting in Oslo, organisers said.

Dibaba, 25, had been expected to try to break the world record for the mile, a non-Olympic distance given mythical status by middle-distance runners. Russian Svetlana Masterkova set the current record of 4min 12.56sec in Zurich in 1996.

Oslo organisers gave no reason for Dibaba’s withdrawal.

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Dibaba is also slated to try to improve her own 1500m world record of 3:50.07 in the Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on June 16.

Another athlete to pull out of Oslo was Kenyan-born Ruth Jebet, who runs for Bahrain.

The 19-year-old ran the second-fastest time ever over the women’s 3000m steeplechase in Eugene on May 28 and was also expected to have gone for a world record on the Bislett Stadium’s notoriously fast track.