Tsegay follows world record with 800m personal best
PARIS: Ethiopian runner Gudaf Tsegay backed up her 1500 metre indoor record set earlier this week by running the best 800m time of the season so far in Sunday’s meet at Val-deReuil in France.
The 24-year-old broke the 1500m record on Tuesday with a run of three minutes and 53.09 seconds in Lievin, and she continued her wonderful form by powering to 800m victory in 1min 54.52sec.
It beat the previous quickest time of the season, the 1:59.03 run by Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson in January.
“It’s been a very good week,” said Tsegay, who won 1500m bronze in the 2019 outdoor world championships, ater seting a new personal best. “My goal remains the Olympic Games in Tokyo.”
American star Grant Holloway claimed an impressive 60m hurdles win in 7.41 seconds, just 0.11sec off Colin Jackson’s world record.
“I’m not really looking to break records,” said the world 110m hurdles champion. “Records don’t just come to you.”
Home favourite Renaud Lavillenie endured a miserable day in the pole vault, failing three times to cross the first bar set at 5.62 metres.
Meanwhile, reigning world 800-meter champion Donavan Brazier and 2016 Olympic 400m champion Shaunae Miller-uibo cruised to victories in national record times Saturday at a World Athletics Indoor meet in New York.
Brazier broke his American record to win in 1:44.21, this year’s world’s fastest 800 and .01 under his old US mark set last February in New York.
“I just wanted to see what kind of shape I was in,” Brazier said. “I wasn’t going to push it indoors but I’m glad to have goten it again.”
Brazier, who finished 2.05 seconds ahead of British runner-up Jamie Webb, says he’s ready for the Tokyo Olympics.
“I’d rather have the target on my back than not have it,” he said. “I’m going to do my best to defend it.”
Miller-uibo won in a Bahamas record 50.21, breaking Christine Amertil’s mark of 50.34 from 2006 in Moscow with this year’s best time.
“I felt great,” Miller-uibo said. “I wish I had atacked it a litle beter from the start. I had a lot of energy. It was a great race.”
There were 11 national records set in all at the New Balance Grand Prix, contested without spectators due to the Covid-19 pandemic.