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Farah Breaks One-Hour World Record

By Daily sports on September 5, 2020

Mo Farah is a two-time Olympic champion in both the 10,000m and 5,000m

Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah broke the one-hour world record on his return to the track at Friday’s Diamond League meeting in Brussels.

Farah ran 21,330m, bettering the record of 21,285m set by Haile Gebrselassie in 2007.

It is the 37-year-old Briton’s first world record outdoors.

“I’m very happy to break the world record today. What an amazing way to do it and to show people what is possible,” Farah said.

“I feel tired but it's nice to break a world record.”

In the rarely run one-hour race athletes try to cover as much distance as possible in 60 minutes.

Earlier on Friday, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands set a new world record in the women's race. Her 18,930m effort surpassed Dire Tune’s mark of 18,517m, set in 2008.

Farah switched to road running after the Rio Olympics but was returning to the track in his bid to compete in the 10,000m at next year’s postponed Tokyo Games.

Competing for the first time since October’s Chicago Marathon, Farah pulled away alongside Belgium’s Bashir Abdi with 30 minutes left.

The pair’s effort looked in doubt as they fell behind Gebrselassie’s record pace, but they went ahead again as the final quarter of the race began.

In the end, six-time world champion Farah kicked away from Abdi and won the race with ease to become the 12th athlete to hold the record.

Farah will return to road racing when he competes in the Antrim Coast Half Marathon on 12 September.

He will then act as a pace-setter for Kenya’s world record holder Eliud Kipchoge and Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele at the delayed London Marathon on 4 October.

Also competing in Brussels, Britain's world heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson ran a season’s-best time of 13.57 seconds to finish fourth in the 100m hurdles. The 27-year-old later came sixth in the high jump, reaching 1.84m. (BBC)

•PHOTO: Mo Farah

Source Daily sports

Posted September 5, 2020