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Craig Mottram and Meseret Defar Set 3km Road Race World Records

Posted October 1st, 2006 at 2:00 AM by Jeanie Rebb

Section: News & Results

mottram 3k record.jpg Australia’s Craig Mottram and Ethiopia’s Meseret Defar probably thought their year couldn’t - even possibly - get any better. However, it looks like they were wrong - very wrong.

The pair of dominating runners set new road race world records at the Newcastle/Gateshead Great North 3Km. As a matter of fact, they didn’t just break the records - they destroyed them by nearly seven seconds respectively.

Mottram, who had just finished off a dominating season by edging out a World Cup title in Athens, beat Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge with a time of 7:41.7. A victorious Mottram stated:

“I’ve beaten two of the best distance runners in the world in the last two weeks . . . It’s a great way to end the year and great to show someone can beat the Africans. Now I’m looking forward to a four or five week break. I think I deserve it.”

Defar’s record setting run was her third such record breaker of the year. She won the Great North Run in 8:46.9; beating the old world best of 8:53 set by Germany’s Luminita Zaituc in 2001.

In a post-race interview, the joyous Defar was quoted as saying:

“It was my intention from the beginning to go after the record . . . I want to be the IAAF’s athlete of the year, so after breaking the 5km record on the road and the track, and beating Tirunesh Dibaba a couple of times, I thought a third record here would be good . . . Now I’m going to have a holiday.”

Source: [IAAF]

Picture from: [IAAF]