Returning to the scene of her record-breaking mark over 5000m last year, Faith Kipyegon broke her own world 1500m record at the Meeting de Paris, clocking 3:49.04 in the final race of the Wanda Diamond League meeting in the French capital.
Kipyegon’s performance yesterday came less than an hour after Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh had broken the world high jump record with 2.10m.
The early pace was swift, with Kipyegon covering 800m in 2:04 as Australia’s Jess Hull positioned herself just a stride behind the multiple world and Olympic champion. With the pacemakers having dropped out, Kipyegon covered the third lap in 60.8 seconds and continued to increase her pace.
She kicked at the bell and opened up a gap over Hull, striding clear to win in 3:49.04, taking 0.07 off the world record she set last year in Florence. Hull finished second in 3:50.83, smashing her own Oceanian record to move to fifth on the world all-time list. Laura Muir was third in a British record of 3:53.79.
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“I knew the world record was possible because I recently ran very fast in Kenya,” said Kipyegon, who clocked 3:53.98 at Kenya’s Olympic Trials. “I was coming here to just run my race and to see what shape I’m in to defend my title at the Olympics.”
Meanwhile, Mahuchikh gave herself the perfect pre-Olympic tonic by setting a new world record of 2.10 metres in the women’s long jump just three weeks out from the Paris Games.
That mark beat by 1cm the previous record set by Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova in Rome in 1987, one of track and field’s longest-standing.
Mahuchikh had entered the competition at 1.92m and despite three failures on her way to clearing 2.03, then passed at 2.05m.
One jittery failure at 2.07 was swiftly followed by a successful attempt, before she cleared 2.10m at the first time of asking to rapturous applause from the crowd at the Stade Charlety in southern Paris.
She sprinted arms held aloft in triumph to embrace her coaching team.
Her record-setting feat will see Mahuchikh, who fled the Russian bombardment of her native city of Dnipro in February 2022, return to the French capital as one of the nailed-on stars for the Games.
The 22-year-old claimed world gold in Budapest last year after claiming silver in Eugene, losing to Australian Eleanor Patterson on countback, the same result she achieved in Doha in 2019.
Because of the war, the Ukrainian had to make a six-day car journey to Belgrade in 2022 where she added the world indoor high jump title to those two world silvers and Olympic bronze she had already collected.