Kenya's Cheruiyot plots gold hunt at Rio Olympics

An attempt to double at the Olympics Games in 2012 cost World 10,000m champion Vivian Cheruiyot the gold medal in London.

Cheruiyot opted to take her frustration away from the track and use the time to review her case and give birth to her first.

But three years since she won silver (5,000m) and bronze (10,000m) in London, Cheruiyot announced her return to form in Beijing with a magnificent run to win the 10,000m race and reclaim the title she last won in Daegu, 2013.

"This is my real comeback. I had many thoughts in my head during the race but I told myself I want to win, no matter how hard it is," said Cheruiyot after winning her gold medal.

"It is even more precious now after I became a mother a year ago. I dedicate this medal to my son. I am not going to double here, this is it. I will run in Zurich (Diamond League in September) and then want to get ready to fight for a medal in Rio."

Her coach and husband Moses Kiplagat believes that their loss in London will be repaid in Rio in 2016 as Cheruiyot goes for the only medal missing in her collection before she goes a gear-up to marathon starting 2017.

"In Rio, she is going for gold medal. We have planned for that and her training will be done with that in mind. But we also know that she is to move up to marathon, but that can wait until after the Olympics," Kiplagat said on Tuesday from Beijing.

"In Beijing, without Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia, it was always going to be her, because I had seen how committed she was in training, and winning in Beijing was just the icing on the cake. The hard work was done in training," he added.

Cheruiyot became the second athlete, after Dibaba, to win multiple medals in the women's 10,000m at the World Championships.

It was also a good reward for Cheruiyot, whose only other performance in Beijing was in 2008 at the Olympic Games, where she finished a distant fifth in the 5,000m race.

Meanwhile, Kenya is still hurting from the loss of the men's marathon team, who despite being favourite on paper, saw Paris Marathon champion Mark Korir struggle to finish in position 22 while his two colleagues, World Marathon record holder Dennis Kimetto and New York Marathon winner Wilson Kipsang, failed to finish.

The two have since come out to explain their predicaments in Beijing.

"When I got to the 30km-mark, I could not go farther. I said let me save myself. The sun, the heat was too much. I was burning and I couldn't even breathe. I tried to gasp for air nothing was going in," said Kipsang.

"I am used to running in cooler conditions but something like 30 degrees was too much. It destroyed us," said Kimetto.

Head coach Julius Kirwa said they will in future change the selection criteria for the marathon. He also believes they should spend longer acclimatizing ahead of future championships. Endi