2 January 2008
Nairobi — With a blistering run on what has quickly become her favourite indoor track, Tirunesh Dibaba sliced five and a half seconds from the World Indoor record in the 5,000m at the Boston Indoor Games on January 27.
Striking out alone at the halfway point and lapping the entire field in the process, the 22-year-old Ethiopian reached the line in 14:27.42, shattering the 14:32.93 mark she set on the same track nearly two years earlier.
"I was prepared for this race," she said, "and I had the confidence to break the record. (But) I didn't think I would break it by this much."
Meseret Defar
If Defar is the type of athlete who creates a pre-season to-do list, the reigning 5,000m Olympic champion didn't let a thing get by her in a busy and sterling campaign that stretched from late January to late September.
Her heroics began in Stuttgart on February 3, just a week after illness "slowed" her to an 8:30.31 victory at the Boston Indoor Games, the fifth fastest ever at the time, and one that left her lying flat on the track in distress.
That agony seemed a distant memory at the Sparkassen Cup, where she clipped more than four seconds from Liliya Shobukhova's 2006 record with a thrilling 8:23.72 performance. But the race was perhaps most memorable precisely because it was indeed a frantic run until the last possible moment.
Defar found herself chased to the line by compatriot Meselech Melkamu, who in her indoor debut finished just a hair's width adrift in 8:23.74. Had it not been for the precocious 22-year-old aggressive run, Defar said she could have gone even faster.
Samuel Wanjiru
Even before he celebrated his 21st birthday on November 10, Samuel Wanjiru was already well on his way to building a strong case as one of the finest half marathoners ever.
The precocious Kenyan made that perfectly clear in last year when he twice dipped under the legendary Haile Gebrselassie's 2006 mark of 58:55. On February 9, he clipped two seconds from the great Ethiopian's mark with a 58:53 performance in Ras Al Khaimah, but the mark was not ratified since an EPO analysis was not performed. Then he did it again just five weeks later at The Hague where he crushed his mark, leaving no doubts after clocking a staggering 58:33. And he did it virtually alone.
"At three kilometres I felt that the pace was too slow," he said, "the only thing I could do was to accelerate! Nobody followed, I knew that I had to run alone." So, for the next 18km, he said, "the only thing I was thinking of was bettering the World record."
Lornah Kiplagat
Producing a near replay of her performance at the inaugural World Road Running Championships, Lornah Kiplagat used the race's second edition, with the charming ancient streets of Udine as a backdrop, to illustrate yet again that she is the finest all-around road runner in the world.
Aggressive and assertive from the outset, the 33-year-old Kenyan-born Dutchwoman stormed to victory over the Half Marathon course in 1:06:25, chopping a hefty 19sec from the previous mark, 1:06:44, set in 1999 by South African Elena Meyer in Tokyo.
Sans pacemakers, Kiplagat took to the front immediately, and rarely looked back. Just five kilometres into the race, Kiplagat's stern pace had already reduced the field to seven challengers.
By midway, only Kenyan Mary Keitany remained. She managed to keep close for the next five kilometres, and her gutsy perseverance was eventually rewarded with a Kenyan national record 1:06:48. Always thriving in an intimate road race environment, Kiplagat relied upon her keen experience to guide her towards the record.
"I heard from people along the course that I was on (record) pace so I kept on pushing," Kiplagat said. "And with 2km to go, I was watching the time on the lead car, and at that point I knew that I could do it. I didn't panic and just kept the same pace."
For her patience, she was also rewarded with a world record for 20km, clocking 1:02:57, 24sec faster than the record she set at last year's inaugural World Road Running Championships in Debrecen, Hungary.
Haile Gebrselassie
When he finally decided to turn his full attention to the marathon in 2002, Haile Gebrselassie knew that the classic 42.197km distance would pose significant challenges that even he, with his wealth of racing experience, could not predict.
He experienced and confronted head-on many of those in each of his six marathon excursions prior to last year's Berlin Marathon. While he quickly established himself as one of the fastest marathoners in history, he continued to come up a little short in his highly publicised world record attempts.
During a largely solo run at the 2006 Berlin race, the legendary Ethiopian challenged Paul Tergat's 2:04:55 world record for just over 35km. But with the winds battering and temperatures rising over the final stretch, he was reminded again how truly challenging Tergat's performance is to surpass.
But that changed during his second attempt through the streets of the German capital in September. Blessed by near ideal conditions, the two-time Olympic champion finally conquered one of his two primary marathon goals with his 2:04:26 performance, shattering the mark set in 2003 by his Kenyan rival and friend.
It was the 23rd world record or world best of his unparalleled career, with Gebrselassie indicating it was near the very top of his legendary collection of honours.
Asafa Powell
It didn't take Asafa Powell too long to bounce back from his disappointing bronze medal performance at the World Championships. Just 14 days after finishing third behind American Tyson Gay in Osaka, the 24-year-old Jamaican finally smashed through the 9.77 barrier he first set in June 2005.
"Today I proved to the world that Asafa is back," was his pronouncement after a sensational 9.74 dash in the first of two heats at the Rieti leg of the World Athletics Tour. Describing what has become an uncanny knack for producing blistering times, Powell added, "I ran easily."
In the final, he nearly did it again, producing a 9.78 run in perfectly still conditions, a performance bettered by only one other man.
He first dashed into the record books on June 14, 2005, clocking 9.77 at the Athens Super Grand Prix. Last year, he repeated the feat twice, first in Gateshead in June and again two months later at Z¸rich's Weltklasse.
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