Defar's Perfect 5000

The Sunday Age

Sunday June 17, 2007

By Len Johnson

MESERET Defar smashed the world record for 5000 metres at the Oslo Golden League meeting on Friday night, continuing to push the world towards the previously unapproachable standards set by the Chinese members of Ma's Army a decade and more ago.

Ethiopian Defar ran 14 minutes 16.63 seconds to take almost eight full seconds off her own record set in New York last year. The rest of the field was way behind, save for Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya, who was also under the old mark with 14:22.51.

In 1993 and 1997, two waves of Chinese runners, guided by their eccentric coach Ma Yunren, obliterated the previous world records for 1500, 3000, 5000 and 10,000 metres. The times were regarded as space age then (and, by many, as performance-enhanced), though they were not wildly out of line with where the records should have been.

Defar's performance in the 5000 seems to bear that out. Of the four records, the 5000 mark is the only one to be broken by a non-Ma, non-Chinese athlete.

After the Ma-coached pair Dong Yanmei (14:31.27) and Jiang Bo (14:28.09) set records in 1997, former Ethiopian Elvan Abeylegesse, now running for Turkey, did 14:24.68 in 2004 and then Defar improved that marginally to 14:24.53 last year. The other marks - 3:50.46 for 1500, 8:06.11 for 3000 and 29:31.78 for 10,000 - have not been approached, though Paula Radcliffe ran a tick over 30 minutes in winning the European 10,000 in 2002.

None of them has had the benefit of two athletes such as Defar and her Ethiopian teammate Tirunesh Dibaba, who did not run in Oslo, pushing each other whether they race together or separately.

On the standard conversion used from 5000 to 10,000 - double the 5000 time and add one minute - Defar's Oslo performance equates almost exactly to the 10,000 record.

"Everything was perfect today," Defar said. "I didn't think I could break the record by such a big margin. But I was aiming under 14:20, so I think I did a good job."

Asafa Powell, looking a little below his smoothest and best in his first major outing for the season, won the men's 100 metres in 9.94 seconds, just over a metre clear of Francis Obikwelu of Portugal. "It was just as I wanted," Powell said. "The start was good and that was important. I'm just where I was last year . . . sub-10 is always good."

Sweden's Christian Olsson endured a rare defeat in the triple jump, but it was enough to put him out of contention for the $US1 million ($A1.19 million) jackpot for going undefeated through the six Golden League meetings.

Commonwealth champion Phillips Idowu of Britain won with 17.35 metres, two centimetres further than Olsson's best. That Olsson also had a jump of 17.30 metres was no consolation.

Norway's javelin ace Andreas Thorkildsen was another with Golden League credentials, but the local hero could do no better than third, albeit with a credible 87.79 metres. Tero Pitkamaki of Finland threw 88.78 to win from Breaux Greer of the US by five centimetres.

Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva cleared 4.85 metres to win the women's pole vault by 25 centimetres.

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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