OK, I think I understand what happened. In the "alltime" list, many of the 10km road times, marked with a "+", were not 10km road races, but achieved "en route" in longer races, e.g. a semi-marathon. This explains most of the difference, but when she ran 30:37 in Oct. 2013, looking strictly at 10km races, before Oct. 2013, she was still only 6th fastest woman. Upon closer inspection, this "fifth fastest woman ever" at Wikipedia was written in April 2012, by "Sillyfolkboy" when he created the athlete bio, and refers to her 30:38 performance in Tilburg (NED) in Sep. 2011, a result found at the IAAF website, but not appearing in the alltime list. This time made her 5th fastest woman of all time. I think Wikipedia accuracy is a community effort. Neither Chepkirui, nor her coach, nor her agent, nor anyone really, is under any obligation to update a Wikipedia entry (in English). As I mentioned, this "fifth fastest woman ever" was penned in 2012, and has never been updated since. By my quick count, she has now dropped to "fifteenth fastest woman ever" in a 10km road race. The number of times that the 10km road top times occurred in a longer race (I counted 12 out of the top 30) suggests that these top times for 10km road could be much faster if more attempts were made at that specific distance.
Passport Era Doping wrote:
rekrunner wrote:
5th fastest? Did you mean 30th fastest ever road 10K? Or 18th fastest performer?
No...at the time I posted 5th fastest performer based on her Wikipedia page:
"Joyce Chepkirui (born 20 August 1988) is a Kenyan long-distance runner who competes in road running events. She established herself as a half marathon runner, winning races in Granollers, Bogotá and Gothenburg. She set a best of 1:06:19 hours to win the 2014 Prague Half Marathon. She also competes in 10K road races and her personal best of 30:38 minutes makes her fifth fastest woman ever."
I checked her IAAF profile that was linked on her Wikipedia page (I was off by one second) but didn't have the time to do any further research. I do see the discrepancy you accurately pointed out from the women's road 10km all-time best. 5th fastest vs 18th fastest performer is quite a discrepancy. But who's responsible for the content of her Wikipedia page? Chepkirui? Her coach? Her agent? It's a pretty detailed Wikipedia page given her history & time lines.