Women’s 10K: Weini Kelati Wins Olympic Trials; Parker Valby, Karissa Schweizer Looking Good for Paris

EUGENE, Ore. — Weini Kelati won her first track national title in style on Saturday night. Since becoming a US citizen just days before the 2021 Olympic Trials, Kelati, who emigrated to the US in 2014 after competing at the World Junior Championships at Hayward Field, has had a tortured relationship with US championships. She dropped out of those initial 2021 Trials, then finished 4th in the 5,000 meters and 5th in the 10,000 meters in 2022. Last year, she was 4th in the 10,000, 8th in the 5,000. Fast enough to contend, not quite fast enough to make the team.

No more. Not only will Kelati be going to the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she will be doing so as a US champion after winning a thrilling women’s 10,000-meter final on the penultimate night of the US Olympic Trials. In a race that featured four lead changes over the final 450 meters, the 27-year-old Kelati of Under Armour Dark Sky Distance kicked best to win in 31:41.07 (66.76 final lap), just ahead of the University of Florida’s Parker Valby, who edged the Bowerman Track Club’s Karissa Schweizer by four-thousandths of a second. Both Valby and Schweizer were credited with a time of 31:41.56.

Kelati, the only woman in the race with the 30:40.00 Olympic standard, is guaranteed to be going to the Olympics. Valby and Schweizer will have to wait for their spots to be official, but are very likely to be going as well based on their world rankings (we explain in more detail later). Those three were well clear of the rest of the field as Jessica McClain, who finished 4th at the Olympic Marathon Trials in February, was 4th again tonight in 32:04.57, more than 20 seconds back.

The Race

Conditions were warm for a 25-lap race, with a temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit and half the track in shade due to the 6:09 p.m. PT start time. Even though Kelati was the only woman with the Olympic standard (Katie Izzo was also in the rankings quota due to her cross country ranking), no one pushed the pace too quickly for the first half, with Susanna Sullivan doing the early leading and hitting 5k at 16:09.40.

Erika Kemp went to the front with eight laps to go and got things rolling, going 78-74-75 for her next three laps, but the racing truly began when Valby, waiting far longer than usual to take the lead, hit the front with five laps remaining. She dropped a 70 and immediately it was a three-person race with Schweizer and Kelati the only women to go with her. Valby was putting the hurt on, going 71-70-70 for her next three laps, but her rivals would not budge and Schweizer, who had beaten Valby for the third Olympic spot in the 5,000 five days earlier, took the lead just before the bell.

Kelati pushed past Valby into second on the first turn, but this time Valby was not going anywhere, even when Kelati responded with her own move to take the lead on the backstretch. Schweizer tried again to launch a winning move with 140m to go on the final turn, and though she was able to pass Kelati, she was unable to shut the door on the inside. That allowed Kelati, summoning one final kick, to steam by on the rail and take the win. Valby, digging deep, drew level with Schweizer with 50 to go and the two would battle stride-for-stride to the line with Valby taking 2nd in a photo finish.

The top three all ran significant negative splits (16:09.88/15:31.19 for Kelati) and all three closed in under 4:40 for their final 1600 (4:38.45 for Kelati, 4:39.35 for Valby, 4:39.14 for Schweizer).

Results

Quick Take: Weini Kelati’s incredible 2024 season will include a trip to Paris

Kelati has a reputation as a long distance specialist, winning NCAA XC in 2018 and the NCAA 10k title for New Mexico in 2019, but until this year her mileage had been more like that of a 1500 runner, as she would typically run 50-60 per week (in six days). This year, she finally decided to take a risk and bump up her volume and she began to see the results almost immediately, running an American record of 66:25 in her half marathon debut in Houston in January.

Since then, Kelati has been on fire, winning USA XC, finishing 15th at World XC, and running pbs of 14:35 and 30:33 in the 5,000 and 10,000. Now she will head to the Olympics as the US champion.

Kelati has traveled an unorthodox path to the Olympics. The first time she came to Hayward Field, for the World Juniors 10 years ago, she made the decision to leave her family in Eritrea behind and, at the age of 17, seek a better life in the US. She eventually found a relative in Virginia and settled there, winning the Foot Locker Cross Country title in 2015 and earning a scholarship to the University of New Mexico. Now, at the same track (kind of) where she came to the US in 2014, she clinched an Olympic spot for her new country.

Quick Take: Here’s why Valby and Schweizer are likely to go to the Olympics

There are only 27 spots in the Olympic 10,000 field so the auto standard is very fast — 30:40, a time only six Americans have ever run. So Valby and Schweizer will have to rely on qualifying via world ranking. The good news for both of them is that that is likely to happen.

World ranking is determined by an average of your two best performances during the qualification window. After tonight, Valby will have 1213 world ranking points. She has 1221 from running 30:50 at the Bryan Clay Invite in April and will get 1205 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 50 bonus points for finishing 2nd in a Category B competition).

Schweizer will have 1209 world ranking points. She has 1218 from running 31:04 at The TEN in March and will get 1200 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 45 bonus points for finishing 3rd in a Category B competition).

If you look at the Road to Paris list, and remove the injured American Alicia Monson from the list, that would put them at #29 & #30 on the list – and 27 go to Paris.

Updated Road To Paris Standings
#27 – Elly Henes – USA
#28 – Klara Luken – Slovena
#29 – Valby – USA
#30 – Schweizer – USA

That doesn’t sound good at first glance, but two of the people ahead of them would be Americans they beat in the Trials in Katize Izzo (qualified via xc) and Elly Henes (world rank #27). If you removed them from the list as USATF wants to honor the order of finish at the Trials, Valby and Schweizer would move up to #27 and #28. Thus if there was one scratch, USATF could send the top 3 from the Trials.

And it seems likely that there will be at least one scratch from people ranked in the top 27 as the following must be considered:

• Eritrea’s Rahel Daniel hasn’t competed since February 2023.
• Sweden’s Sarah Lahti hasn’t competed since March. She had hamstring surgery, won’t even start running until next month and her Instagram post makes it sound like she’s not running the Olympics.
• Uganda’s Annet Chelangat may not be entered as she has never broken 34:00 on the track (although she was 16th at World XC).
• France’s Alessia Zarbo, the former Oregon Duck, might not be entered as she has track pbs of 4:19.99, 9:15.98, 15:50.47, and 32:28.57.
• It’s not clear that Britain will use all three of its spots as Eilish McCoglan (who has the standard) is coming back from injury and dropped out of Europeans, Jessica Warner-Judd (who has the standard) has been suffering seizures in races and has said her season is over, and Samantha Harrison (who could replace them) hasn’t raced all year.

The Road to Paris is not finalized — the qualifying window ends on Sunday and we still need results from other national championships to roll in — but Valby and Schweizer may have done enough to secure their spots.

MB Let’s figure it out here. Road to Paris 10,000m Points after Trials Race

Quick Take: Parker Valby was not sure she would run the 10,000 at the Trials until today

Valby said she was extremely nervous heading into the 5,000 at the Trials and that the strain of leading that race — as well almost every other race she has run this season — took a significant toll on her. In the aftermath of her 4th-place finish in the 5,000, she had not planned on running the 10,000 but took some time to regroup and decided to give it a go.

“You don’t realize it, but it does take a lot to lead a race,” Valby said. “It took a lot out of me emotionally, too…I didn’t come this far just to come this far. I didn’t want to leave on a fourth-place note and I knew my strength was probably the 10k.”

Valby knew the pace had to be somewhat fast tonight for her to earn enough ranking points to get to Paris, but left the rankings math to her coaches Will and Samantha Palmer, counting on them to inform her during the race if she needed to pick it up to chase the time.

“They definitely know the time [they were targeting for me] but they weren’t going to tell me the time because they knew that I would focus way too much on the time,” Valby said.

Valby enjoyed not having to lead from the gun and showed impressive resilience in the home straight. Valby has not been tested in a home-straight battle like that all season and was up against Schweizer, who beat her convincingly in the 5,000 earlier in the meet. Yet Valby, at the end of a very long season, held her own with Schweizer and nipped her with a lean at the line. Now after one of the greatest seasons ever by a collegian, Valby is very likely going to the Olympics at age 21 — perhaps in two events if Elle St. Pierre makes the team in the 1500 and scratches the 5,000.

MB PARKER WTH VALBY out kicks Karissa for 2nd in 10000m OTs

Quick Take: Karissa Schweizer may be a double Olympian for the second consecutive Games

In 2021, Karissa Schweizer made the Olympics in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at 25 years old. Three years later, Schweizer looks to have qualified in both events again, but the path has been anything but smooth. She had sugery on her right heel in 2021 to correct a Haglund’s deformity, tore her calf in 2022, then had Haglund’s surgery on her left heel in October 2023. Oh, and she lost two of her best training partners as Elise Cranny and Courtney Frerichs left the Bowerman Track Club at the end of 2023.

Yet Schweizer rehabbed, pressed on, and delivered, twice, in the pressure-packed Trials this weekend. She got emotional in the mixed zone thinking about all she has persevered through to head back to a second Olympics.

“It’s a sigh of relief,” Schweizer said. “You just put a lot of pressure on yourself and you work really hard to get to these moments. Once you finally do it…I don’t really have words for it.”

Quick Take: Jessica McClain 4th again, six months later

McClain was 4th at the Olympic Marathon Trials on February 3, but you need only look at athletes like Paul Chelimo (10th in the 10k) and Natosha Rogers (12th in the 10k) to see how difficult it can be to transition their bodies back to the track after the grind of marathon training. McClain, who picked up a Brooks sponsorship after her impressive marathon showing, had not run USAs on the track since 2019 and had never finished higher than 8th until tonight.

Quick Take: Amanda Vestri finished 5th racing in shoes she had never worn until two hours before the race

One year ago, Amanda Vestri finished 7th in the NCAA 10,000-meter final for Syracuse, then finished 8th at USAs. Tonight, she was 5th, and it is a testament to the progress she has made in the last year — dropping her pbs from 15:42 and 32:08 to 15:13 and 31:10 — that she felt disappointed with her run.

“Not the race I wanted to have,” Vestri said. “But one of these days, I’ll be able to kick with those women.”

Vestri trains with ZAP Endurance team under coach Pete Rea but did not have a shoe sponsor until two hours before the race, when she agreed to a deal with Brooks that her agent Josh Cox had been working on. Vestri quickly pivoted and wound up racing in the Brooks singlet and spikes in the final despite never having worn them before.

“I really like them,” Vestri said. “Good shoes. I mean, shoes are shoes. The technology is up to date. Haven’t tried their trainers yet, so I’ll probably put those on for my cooldown.”

Moving forward, Vestri says she plans to remain with Rea as her coach but said her status with representing ZAP is up in the air. Vestri’s college coach Brien Bell told LetsRun she has the makings of a good marathoner and Vestri will take the first step towards that this fall when she makes her half marathon debut.

Keira D’Amato post-race

D’Amato finished 10th in 32:25.77.

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MB Let’s figure it out here. Road to Paris 10,000m Points after Trials Race
MB PARKER WTH VALBY out kicks Karissa for 2nd in 10000m OTs

Update: After publication, this article was updated and the Road To Paris Rankings part was re-written.