Ugandan world athletics star Joshua Cheptegei is missing one medal in his glittering cabinet: Olympic 10,000m gold.

And it is the one he will be running after at the Olympic Games in France's capital Paris later this year.

The Paris Games will take place from July 26 until August 11.

Specifically, the men's 10,000m final that Cheptegei will be racing in will be the very last event of a packed August 2. It will be a Friday.

The 27-year-old long-distance runner has just under four months to ready himself.

He may have finished sixth at the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Serbia's capital Belgrade last weekend in a race won by compatriot Jacob Kiplimo, but Cheptegei is not a spent force as some had started imagining.

Indeed, it would be foolhardy to call time on the three-time world and 5,000m Olympic champion.

The upcoming Olympics will be the last time we shall see the world-class runner on the track because he will transition fully to the road. And he will be keen to say goodbye to the track on a 10,000m golden note.

Cheptegei has won the 10,000m race three times in a row at the World Championships (2019, 2022 and 2023)

'Setbacks make me hungrier'

At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan, Cheptegei won gold and silver in the 5,000m and 10,000m, respectively.

He is now using his disappointing — for a man of his calibre — sixth-place finish in Belgrade, which he has blamed on inadequate preparation, as inspiration to go all out in Paris on a quest for personal redemption.

"I am grateful because normally for me, I always like such setbacks because they always make me hungrier for the future," he told Vision Sport after participating in the 8th French Olympic and Paralympic week celebration at the French School in Kampala on Thursday.

In 2017, after his world cross country implosion on home soil in Kampala, Cheptegei swiftly picked himself up and went on to win 10,000m silver at the World Championships in London later that year.

That put him on course for more golden glory on different global stages.

Cheptegei has won the 10,000m race three times in a row at the World Championships (2019, 2022 and 2023). 

He also has two Commonwealth Games gold to this name in the 5,000m and 10,000m, both achieved in 2018 on Australia's Gold Coast.

He won two gold (individual and team) at the 2019 World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

"I am very passionate. I am really hungry to win the [Olympic] 10k title because it is one of the things that I have never won in history, so I need to win gold in Paris."

Cheptegei holds the current world record for 5,000m and 10,000m. He holds the world best time over the 15km distance.

He is one of only 10 men in history to hold the 5,000m and 10,000m world records concurrently.