Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen broke a 24-year-old world record in the rarely run 2,000 metres in the Diamond League meeting in Brussels on Friday.
On a warm evening in the Belgian capital, the 22-year-old who is the world 5,000 metre champion and Olympic champion at 1,500 metres, set a time of 4 minutes 43.13 seconds to beat the previous record of 4:44.79 by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999.
Ingebrigtsen, who set a world record at two miles in Paris in June, said he had been helped by pace-makers going a little further than expected and now had a thirst for further records, from his speciality of 1,500 metres eventually to as much as a marathon.
“I think I’m at a point in my career where I can challenge all the records as well. So that’s going to continue to be the goal in the future,” he told a press conference.
Among other stand-out performances in the penultimate Diamond League meeting before the finals in Eugene next weekend, were Jamaican sprinter Shericka Jackson in the 200 metres and Japanese javelin thrower Haruka Kitaguchi, both crowned world champions last month.
Jackson was far too strong for the competition but having targeted a world record on the new, faster Brussels track, she had to settle for a Diamond League event record of 21.48, seven-hundredths of a second outside her world championship winning run in Budapest last month, which was the second fastest women’s 200 metres of all time.
Kitaguchi threw a 2023 world-leading distance of 67.38 metres in the final round to secure victory against a strong women’s javelin line-up.
In the 400 metre hurdles, Dutch world champion Femke Bol destroyed the opposition to set a meeting record of 52.11 seconds.
Jamaican Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah, the world’s fastest sprinter still competing, showed a return to form after an injury-hit season with victory in the 100 metres in a season’s best time of 10.84 seconds.
In the women’s 1,500 metres, Britain’s Laura Muir needed her season’s best time of 3 minutes 55.34 seconds to hold off Ciara Mageean, who set an Irish national record of 3:55.87, in a tight duel for the line.
Source: Reuters
