5000 metres
long-distance track running event
The 5000 metres or 5000-metre run is a common long-distance running event in track and field. It is one of the track events in the Olympic Games and the World Championships in Athletics, run over 12+1⁄2 laps of a standard 400 m track, or 25 laps on an indoor 200 m track. The same distance in road running is called a 5K run; referring to the distance in metres rather than kilometres serves to disambiguate the two events.
The 5000 m has been present on the Olympic programme since 1912 for men and since 1996 for women. Prior to 1996, women had competed in an Olympic 3000 metres race since 1984. The 5000 m has been held at each of the World Championships in Athletics in men's competition and since 1995 in women's. It is approximately equivalent to 3 miles 188 yards or 16,404 feet 2 inches.
The event is almost the same length as the dolichos race held at the Ancient Olympic Games, introduced in 720 BCE. World Athletics keeps official records for both outdoor and indoor 5000-metre track events.
3 miles
The 5000 metres is the (slightly longer) approximate metric equivalent of the 3-mile (4,828.0 m) run, an event common in countries which used the imperial measurement system. The 3-mile event featured in the Commonwealth Games through 1966, and was a championship in the United States in non-Olympic years from 1953 to 1973.
“5000 metres” enters the record as long-distance track running event. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what metres, long-distance and track can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“5000 metres” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, metres, long-distance and track provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q240500. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1996, 1984 and 1995.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “5000 metres” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.