Meseret Defar won two races and set one world best over the weekend. © www.photorun.net
Meseret Defar crowned the 31st van Damme Memorial meeting in the Golden League in Brussels with a world best for 2 miles. In front of a capacity crowd of 47,000, the 23 year old ran 8:58.58 minutes, the first time a woman had gone under 9:00. It was the fourth time Defar set a world best this year, the others being 3,000mindoors, an earlier record for 2 miles and 5,000 meters in Oslo.
The 2-mile distance is only rarely run and is not included in any list of official world records. For that reason, marks at the distance are considered world bests, not world records. However, that doesn’t detract from the impressive performance of Defar. She improved her record from earlier this season of 9:10.47 by almost 12 seconds. The measure of the achievement is all the more striking when the official split for 3,000m is taken into account: Defar went through in 8:24.51. That not only took the Ethiopian record from Berhane Adere in a time that took her to the top of the world rankings, but made her the 12th fastest 3,000m runner of all time.
“I actually wanted to run 8:55, ” said Defar. “But 8:57 isn’t exactly bad either!” The Russian Olga Komyagina was pacemaker for Defar, but could only last until halfway. After that the world 5,000m champion in Osaka was on her own. Increasing the pace, she went through the first mile in 4:33.07 and still was able to break 9:00. Kenyan Priscah Ngetich, in second place with 9:14.09, set a national record, while her compatriot Silvia Kibet was third in 9:16.62.
Next year Defar not only wants to become Olympic champion over 5,000m, but also to test herself at 10,000m. “I won’t be running the 10,000m in Beijing, but I will try to break the world record for the distance in 2008,” she said The record is one of those set by Chinese runners in 1993; Wang Junxia ran 29:31.78. It’s a time that no one has approached. Paula Radcliffe (Great Britain) ran 30:01.09 at the European Championships in Munich in 2002 to get closest. There will be a lot of interest next year to see if Defar can close the gap. In the light of her best time for 5,000m, this seems a definite possibility—as long as she can find the right pacemakers.
Kenenisa Bekele Misses World Record
The second world record attempt in Brussels ended in failure. “I feel in better form than for the past two years,” Kenenisa Bekele had said before he made an attempt on his world record for 10,000m (26:17.53), set two years ago in Brussels. The problem, as the meeting director Wilfried Meert hinted at during the press conference the day before, was pacemaking at such world record attempts. “It’s not easy to find someone who can run 13:08 for the first 5,000 meters on their own from the front,” Meert explained, while Bekele, the world 10,000m champion from Osaka, said: “It’s hard to keep concentration over 25 laps when you have to be checking that the pacemaker is going fast enough.” That turned out to be exactly the problem. In ideal weather conditions the last of the pacemakers, Abreham Cherkos Fekele (Ethiopia), stepped off the track after 3,800m. Before that it seemed as if Bekele was really going to keep his compatriot going.
Out on his own, the world record holder went through 5,000m in 13:13.76. The prospect of a world record steadily faded from view, and instead the race became suddenly exciting. Kenyan Moses Masai almost caught Bekele with one lap remaining. After that scare the Olympic champion put on a spurt and won in a world best time this season of 26:46.19 – a time which ranks it 21st among the best performances in history. Masai was second in 26:49.20, and his compatriot Micah Kogo third in 26:58.42.
