Australia's Rose Davies made Commonwealth Games history by becoming the first woman to win both the 5,000m and 10,000m at a single edition of the Games, completing the distance double at Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, before the 2026 Commonwealth Games concluded on Sunday.
Davies, who had won the 10,000m title on the opening day of the athletics program, returned roughly 72 hours later to take the 5,000m final in 14 minutes 44.53 seconds, edging Jessica Hull, an Australian teammate with strong local ties to Davies's adopted hometown of Newcastle, who finished second in 14:45.01. The result gave Davies a distance double that had never previously been achieved by a woman in the history of the Commonwealth Games.
The achievement capped a standout athletics program at Scotstoun that also featured Scotland's Josh Kerr winning the men's mile in 3 minutes 54.12 seconds on home soil, an event brought back to the Commonwealth Games program for the first time since 1966 as a tribute to Roger Bannister's "Miracle Mile" run at the 1954 Vancouver Games. Kerr, a provisional world record holder in the event, overcame being boxed in during the race before sweeping past Kenya's Timothy Cheruiyot and Australia's Cameron Myers on the final back straight.
Davies's double adds to a growing body of achievement for the Newcastle-based runner, whose back-to-back victories required recovering from one championship-intensity race to peak again within three days, a demanding double that few distance runners attempt at a major championship. Her win over Hull, a training partner and one of the world's top middle-distance runners in her own right, added extra significance to a result that organizers highlighted as one of the defining moments of the Games' athletics competition.
With the Commonwealth Games having concluded, attention in distance running now shifts to the European Athletics Championships, set for August 10-16 in Birmingham, England, and the broader outdoor season, as athletes who competed in Glasgow look ahead to their next major championship assignments.
