Coach: Genzebe Dibaba was in 3:48 shape for 1,500-meter world record

Genzebe Dibaba's coach says the Ethiopian star was in shape to run 3:47 or 3:48 when she broke the 1,500-meter world record last summer.

Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba set the world record in the 1,500-meter run last summer but her coach, Jama Aden, believes she could run even faster and will target more world records in 2016, according to an interview with Athletics Weekly.

Dibaba ran 3:50.07 at the Monaco Diamond League Meeting in July. Dibaba's time broke a 22-year-old world record of 3:50.46 by Qu Yunxia of China set in Sept. 1993.

“The pacemaker in Monaco [Chanelle Price] did a really good job, but the second lap was 64, so if we had that at 62 it changes. She was in 3:47, 3:48 shape; she could have run two seconds faster,” Aden told AW. “She’s young, she has the time. This year I think she should try some of the tough distance records – 3000-meters in 8:06. I think she can do that.”

[youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Acgm0IOEs]

Aden also added that Dibaba ran a 4 x 1,500-meter workout in the lead-up to last year's world championships in Beijing where she ran 4:06, 4:04, 4:03, 4:02 with four to five minutes of recovery time between each rep. She went on to win gold for 1,500-meters and bronze for 5,000-meters at worlds.

Dibaba is an early favorite for the women's 1,500-meter gold medal at this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She failed to advance out of the semifinals in the 1,500-meters at the 2012 Olympics in London.

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She is the younger sister of three-time Olympic gold medalist Tirunesh Dibaba, who holds the women's 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter world records.

- Christopher Chavez