Ethiopia’s Tsegay smashes 1500m indoor world record

Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay established a new 1,500 metre indoor world record with a time of three minutes 53.09 seconds during a meeting in Lievin.

The first two laps of the 1500m at the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting were covered in 59.10 seconds, and 600m was reached in 1:31.54 secs — both splits faster than the equivalent marks in the ‘B’ 800m race earlier on Tuesday evening.

World bronze medallist Gudaf Tsegay was tucked in behind pacemaker Hirut Meshesha, her friend and training partner, but then the tempo dropped on the fourth lap as Tsegay reached the 800m mark in 2:05.94 sec.

From then on, though, Tsegay gradually increased the pace as she continued to pull away from double European indoor champion Laura Muir. Tsegay reached 1000m in 2:37.36 — the fifth-fastest indoor time ever recorded for that distance by an African athlete — then covered the following two laps in 30.6 and 30.16.

The clock read 3:22.6 sec as the bell sounded for the final lap and Tsegay showed no signs of slowing down, churning out another sub-31-second circuit to cross the line in a world indoor record of 3:53.09 sec (subject to the usual ratification procedure).

Tsegay beat by more than two seconds the previous record set by her compatriot Genzebe Dibaba in Karlsruhe in 2014.

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“I’m very happy to set a world indoor record. I have been training really hard and I set myself a target to break the world indoor record,” said Tsegay.

American Grant Holloway ran the second fastest time ever in the men’s 60m hurdles, registering 7.32sec to leave him trailing only Colin Jackson’s world record of 7.30sec from 1994.