Rising Star Almayew ready to soar

Sembo Almayew is a rising star who has steadily been soaring since making her major international debut as a 17-year-old at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in 2022.

Since then, the Ethiopian steeplechase specialist has become a world U20 champion and an Olympic finalist, those achievements contributing to her being named Women’s Rising Star at the World Athletics Awards 2024 in Monaco in December.

There she was joined by the likes of Olympic champions Sifan Hassan and Letsile Tebogo – named the overall World Athletes of the Year – and now Almayew has ambitions of following in their footsteps to claim a global senior medal of her own.

“This year, at the Olympics, I was thinking I could finish in the top three, but that day was not my day – I could not achieve a medal,” reflected Almayew, who finished fifth in the 3000m steeplechase at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the age of just 19.

“This year, I am going to try to at least get medals, or to win.

“I am very happy to have met Sifan here and be talking to her,” added Almayew, who named Olympic marathon champion Hassan and her fellow Athlete of the Year nominee Faith Kipyegon, the three-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist, as athletes who inspire her.

Almayew has already emulated 2012 1500m winner Kipyegon at U20 level on the track, having added her age-group gold from Lima in August to the silver medal she secured in Cali in 2022.

The Ethiopian teenager is among a select group of athletes to have competed at both the World U20 Championships and that year’s respective major senior competition at the past two opportunities: the World Athletics Championships before the World U20 Championships in 2022, and the Paris 2024 Olympics before the World U20 Championships in 2024. During the year in between, she made the 3000m steeplechase final at the World Championships in Budapest. 

“For my result in Lima, plus the Olympics Games, to have these chances I give thanks to God,” Almayew said through an interpreter when asked about her Olympic experience. “To already be at the Olympics at my age, I am very happy. To finish top five looks good for me at this age.”

But this is not the first year in which Almayew has been doing great things for her age. In 2022, in the lead up to making her World Championships debut in Oregon, she ran 9:09.19 to finish second at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Paris, improving her own world U18 best of 9:18.98 she had set in Hengelo 12 days prior. 

At the World U20 Championships in Cali she secured her silver medal behind Kenya’s 2023 Rising Star Faith Cherotich, who has already gone on to become an Olympic and world bronze medallist.

Then, in Florence in 2023, Almayew clinched her first Diamond League win, setting an Ethiopian U20 record of 9:00.71. She followed that by finishing 12th in the world final in Budapest. That Florence performance places Almayew third on the world U20 all-time list and 15th on the senior list, and the 19-year-old was just 0.12 off that mark at the Paris Olympics, where she finished fifth, 23 days before winning her world U20 title.

Almayew is part of a talented athletics family and she wasn’t the only sibling to get a medal in Lima. Her 16-year-old sister Marta won the world U20 cross country title in Belgrade in March and later added a track medal to her haul, becoming a world U20 3000m bronze medallist the day after Sembo claimed her steeplechase title.

“Our family is talented in athletics,” explained Sembo, who set a championship record to become Ethiopia’s first ever world U20 women’s steeplechase champion. “Four of my sisters run.

“First, I was a 1500m runner, but I did a small steeplechase race. In the 1500m I was fourth and my coach advised me to run the steeplechase race. Without any training, I got third place.”

Sembo was inspired by her older sister Mesegan to take up athletics and has received strong support from her family, particularly her father who used to do athletics at school. Previously guided by Birhanu Mekonnen, Sembo is now coached by Hussein Shibo and is targeting the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing as well as the World Championships in Tokyo in 2025.

She will undoubtedly already be inspiring the next generation of athletes with her performances and asked for her advice to them, Sembo replied: “If young athletes can work hard, tomorrow they can get my chance of today.”

Jess Whittington for World Athletics