The 12.12secs record set by Tobi Amusan in the semifinal of women’s 100m hurdles at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon, United States, on July 24, has been ratified as a world record by the World Athletics (WA).
In a statement issued by the world athletics body, Amusan’s feat has now been officially recognized as a world record.
After clocking an African record of 12.40secs in the 100m hurdles heats, the world was put on notice that 25-year-old Amusan was capable of something special.
The next day, she ran 12.12 (0.9m/s) in the semi-finals to improve the world record of 12.20 that had been set by USA’s Kendra Harrison in London in 2016. Amusan was not done there, though, and she followed that remarkable performance with a wind-assisted 12.06 (2.5m/s) to win the final.
“The goal was to come out and to win this gold,” she said. “Honestly, I believe in my abilities, but I was not expecting a world record at these championships,” the Commonwealth Games champion said.
With this development, Amusan now holds the world record as the best female hurdler in the world.
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Also, Mondo Duplantis and Sydney McLaughlin’s records in men’s pole vault and women’s 400m hurdles were ratified alongside Amusan’s feat. Included officially in the record books, is the world U20 mark of 9.94secs set by Letsile Tebogo in the men’s 100m heats.
While Amusan might not have been banking on a world record, Duplantis’s development means that there is a certain level of expectation whenever he takes to the runway. He lived up to it again in Oregon.
McLaughlin’s was the first of the senior records to fall at this year’s World Athletics Championships, the 23-year-old American obliterated her own previous world record with a time of 50.68.
Since 2019 – in less than three years – the world record has been improved by almost two seconds. The mark of 52.34 had stood for 16 years before USA’s Dalilah Muhammad took it to 52.20 and then 52.16. On 27 June 2021, McLaughlin broke it for the first time.
Clearing 6.21m on his second attempt, the Swedish 22-year-old improved his own world record by a centimetre.