DThree world records within two hours and one prevented at that: The Diamond League sports festival in Paris had the effect of a bang, which should draw attention to the Olympic Games there next year.
How different the best performances were: first the surprise of the evening, the world record over 5000 meters. The Kenyan Faith Kipyegon, who only a week earlier had broken the world record over 1500 meters at the Diamond League sports festival in Florence, also proved to be the fastest woman in the world on the twelve and a half laps of the stadium and improved the best time by almost one and a half seconds to 14:05. 20 minutes.
She crossed the finish line wide-eyed, covered her face in astonishment as she looked at the scoreboard, and when she finally had the breathing space, she claimed, “I couldn’t have imagined that I could be that fast. 1500 meters is my distance, but not 5000. It’s unbelievable. I just wanted to improve on my personal best.” The Ethiopian 10,000m world champion Letesenbet Gidey was in the lead with almost two laps to go. When Faith Kipyegon competed, she lost the race and the world record.
The Marita Koch record still stands
How different is the record over 3000 meters obstacle. As if he had something to clarify, the Ethiopian Lamecha Girma got him. At this distance without obstacles he already held the indoor record. On Friday evening in front of 19,000 spectators at the Charléty stadium in the south of Paris, he soloed in 7:52.11 minutes over obstacles and a moat on the track, beating the almost twenty-year-old record of Saif Saaeed Shaheen (Qatar) by more than one Second undercut, the runner-up at the Olympic Games and the World Championships proved to be the dominating athlete on this course. Girma should be the favorite next year when athletics moves to the Stade de France, which is four times the size and has been converted into an Olympic stadium. Olympic champion and world champion Soufiane El Bakkali failed his world record a few weeks ago in Rabat.
No official world record, but a personal best: Jakob Ingebrigtsen
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Image: EPA
The Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen was astonished with the naturalness with which he improved the best time to 7:54.10 minutes on the rarely run two miles (3218 meters) – the organizers awarded him with a kind of giant check on the “World Record” was standing. The world association does not set world records for this route, which is not one of the established competitions, but best times. Ingebristen improved this by four seconds.
“The first laps were really easy,” said the Olympic and world champion about the track behind his pacemaker: “It’s not difficult for me to run laps of 59 seconds.” The race only started after a few laps for him. Ingebrigtsen made it look like the pacemakers had slowed him down. “I didn’t expect to be so quick. I was surprised to suddenly see the light behind me.” In Paris, too, a system of lights on the inside track showed runners and spectators whether they were running behind or ahead of the world record.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Olympic and world champion, failed to break the 38-year-old world record of Marita Koch in the 400 meters without hurdles. The American started the first hundred meters so quickly that she undercut the then intermediate time of the GDR runner for the first quarter of 11.69 seconds by nine hundredths of a second. While some spectators caught their breath at the furious attack on what is probably the most famous of the toxic records from the Cold War era, the 23-year-old runner ran out of breath. At 200 meters it was 22.67 seconds versus 22.45 in favor of Koch. The 23-year-old American finished in 49.71 seconds, beaten by Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic (49.12) and miles from Koch’s 47.60 seconds. One can be sure: she will try again.
