World Records at the Paris Diamond League

The Paris Diamond League is always a fantastic meeting! I have loved the pressers in Paris during the years I attended.

This is Stuart Weir’s second piece on Paris (he’s in Monaco today to cover the Herculis Monaco Meeting), and he focuses on the World Records set in Paris! 

World Records

1 Women’s 1500 meters

Where does one start? Faith Kipyegon broke the world record again, finishing in 3:49.04. But that is only the start – 13 of the 15 finishers ran a PR. The starting list given the media had erroneously listed Faith as a pacemaker. Perhaps it was a Freudian slip as she went with the first pacemaker,  opening up a significant gap on the rest of the field and keeping the pace going to the end. Remember last year when Faith broke the 5K world record in the same stadium in the same meet?

Faith said afterward: “It feels amazing to break the world record. I am going in the right direction towards the Paris Olympics. I have come from afar because of the injury and recovery. After the trials, I knew that I was in world-record shape. I have run the quickest time in Kenya with the altitude. It showed me that I was capable of breaking the world record again. We just tried because everything was possible. Jessica Hull was really good. I felt that she was behind me, and I had to be careful because you never know if something will happen. But I just relaxed and ran my race. I knew she was strong because she had repeatedly broken the area record. The crowd was really cheering that was why the energy was so strong, it was really pushing us towards the finish line. With my injury, I was terrified because I didn’t know if I was going to make it. But I took my time, trusted my team, and stayed out of competition for a long. I will absolutely do the double in Paris, in the 1500m and 5000m”.

2 Women’s High jump

When seven women cleared 1.95, we knew we were in for an exceptional high jump competition. Lamara Distin, Nawal Meniker, Irnya Gerashchenko, and Eleanor Patterson failed at 1.98, and then there were three. Angelina Topic cleared 1.98 but failed at 2:01. Yaraslava Mahuchikh and Nicola Olysagers cleared 2:01. Olysagers failed at 2:03, and Mahuchikh cleared at the second attempt.  She added 2:07 on the second attempt and 2:10 on the first attempt and then called it a day. The previous record of 2:09, set by the  Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova, has stood since 1987.