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At the Florence Diamond League competition on Friday, Faith Kipyegon broke the previous 1500-meter world record. Laura Muir of Great Britain finished in a distant second.
As the race entered its final circuit, Muir trailed the 29-year-old defending world and Olympic champion of Kenya by 10 meters.
And Muir ran a season’s best of 3:57.09 while Kipyegon finished first in 3 minutes 49.11 seconds, breaking the 3:50 barrier for the first time.
In 2015, Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia set the previous benchmark with a time of 3:50.07.
In addition to running a season-best time, Irish athlete Ciara Mageean placed fourth in 4:00.95.
On two separate times, Kipyegon won both the world and Olympic gold, but this is the first time she has broken the world record.
She ran her previous best of 3:50.37 in August, and as of this writing, she has the first and third fastest speeds in history.
Moments before the race, Dina Asher-Smith, a former world champion in the 200 meters, was forced to withdraw due to cramping during warming up.
She posted on social media, “Other than that, everything is good, but I didn’t want to risk anything today.
I was disappointed since I was so eager to race but had to make a wise decision for the greater picture.
After Germany’s Gina Lueckenkemper (11.09) and Marie-Josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast (10.97), fellow Brit Imani-Lara Lansiquot came in third in 11.16 seconds.
The Italian had not recovered from the back issue that kept him out of last Sunday’s Diamond League meet in Rabat, thus world champion Fred Kerley was once more denied the opportunity to compete against Olympic champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs in the men’s 100m.
Kerley defeated fellow Americans Trayvon Bromell (10.09) and Ferdinand Omanyala (10.05) to maintain his perfect record this season.
With a season-best time of 19.89, Erriyon Knighton easily won the men’s 200-meter race.
The 19-year-old American, who now owns the under-18 and under-20 world records, finished far ahead of Canadian Aaron Brown (20.31) and Trinidadian Jereem Richards (20.28) of Tobago.
