LIEVIN – Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma shattered the 25-year-old world indoor 3,000m record yesterday by more than one second at the Lievin meeting as Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis won his third successive pole vault event.
Girma clocked 7min 23.81sec to better the old mark of 7:24.90 set by Kenya’s Daniel Komen in Budapest in February 1998.
The Ethiopian raced alone over the closing four laps and was followed home by Spaniard Mohamed Katir, who broke the European record in 7:24.68, a time also under the old world record.
Girma is a specialist outdoors in the 3000m outdoor steeplechase, an event in which he was the 2021 Olympic silver medallist.
He was also runner-up in the world championships in Doha in 2019 and last year at Eugene. Indoors, he won silver in the 3000m at the 2022 worlds.
World and Olympic champion Duplantis easily won the pole vault with a clearance of 6.01m but the charismatic Swede opted not to try to beat his own world record of 6.21m.
It was a third successive win for 23-year-old Duplantis in the indoor season after 6.10m in Uppsala on February 2 and 6.06m in Berlin last Friday.
He did enough to defeat Italy’s Claudio Stecchi (5.82m) and Kurtis Marschall of Australia (also 5.82m).
Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala claimed victory in the 60m in 6.54sec, edging Italy’s Olympic 100m champion Marcell Jacobs.
Jacobs, a two-time winner previously in Lievin, clocked 6.57 with Arthur Cisse of Ivory Coast third with a time of 6.59sec.
Britain’s in-form 800m specialist Keely Hodgkinson set a world-leading time of 1:57.71sec as she dominated the field, leaving Kenya’s Commonwealth champion Mary Moraa trailing 20m behind in 2:00.61. – AFP, February 16, 2023
