At the 2016 Summer Olympics, she set a world record of 29:17.45 in the 10,000 metres, topping Chinese athlete Wang Junxia's 23 year old world record by 14 seconds. No one previously had run within 22 seconds of Wang's record. The 10,000 metres was already an extremely fast race when Ayana broke away with 12 laps to go. Second-placed Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya finished just a second shy of Wang's record and double Olympic 10,000 metres champion Tirunesh Dibaba earned the bronze medal with a 12 seconds improvement in her personal best and the fourth fastest time in history. Multiple national records were set, and eighteen competitors set personal bests. The lax drug testing regime in Ethiopia and the doping scandals that embroiled athletics before the Rio Olympics caused some to question whether Almaz had been doping. British commentators Brendan Foster and Paula Radcliffe, both former world record holders in distance events, were skeptical about Almaz's performance. Fellow competitors reported that before the race, the Ethiopian was coughing and did not seem well. In her post-race press conference, Ayana said her time was purely the outcome of hard training. On 5 August 2017, she won the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in London.