Daniel Komen’s 3000m world records, both indoors and outdoors, have always been seen in athletics as the best of the best. Some referred to those 7m 20.67s and 7m 24.90s indoors as the Everest of the sport. They seemed superhuman. But all things pass. The second was claimed by Ethiopian Lamecha Girma last year and this Sunday the absolute record for this distance – actually an adaptation of the two miles to the decimal metric system – fell after Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian who is making history in athletics at just 23 years of age, won the Diamond League meeting in Silesia (Poland) with a time of 7m 17.55s, an improvement of more than three seconds. Mondo Duplantis capped a memorable afternoon with a leap of 6.26m, his third pole vault world record this year.
Komen has held the 3000m record for almost 28 years. On 1 September 1996, the Kenyan ran in Rieti, one of the temples of long distance running, in 7m 20.67s. This exceptional athlete was a shooting star who shone from 1996 to 1998. His legend was established in the 67 days that elapsed between 3 July and 7 September 1996. Ten weeks in which he went from missing out on the Atlanta Games to competing in ten races with nine victories, three world records and one defeat (third in the 1500m). Komen, at just 21 years old, broke Haile Gebrselassie’s two-mile record. Then, on 14 August in Zurich, he broke the 5000m record after showing off against Gebre with some impressive changes of pace. And on the first day of September he blew up the 3,000m record.
Komen saw that the 3,000m mark seemed unattainable and, as a challenge to the entire world, offered an acre of the best land in Eldoret, the birthplace of many of Kenya’s great champions, to a runner who would retire his world record. Ingerbigtsen can now claim the homeland after an impressive race in Silesia, where he launched himself after the pace to pass the first thousand in 2m 27s, then tackled the second at a steady pace (4m 55s) and finished off with a final thousand in 2m 22.44s and a final lap in 55 seconds. The newly crowned Olympic 5,000m champion was very surprised by the time he had achieved. “I was hoping to break the world record, but not to run in 7m17s. I didn’t know I could run that fast because I never push myself to the limit in training. Now I want to challenge world records at all distances, but step by step.”
The afternoon, which was very hot, was heated up by Ingebrigtsen’s bombshell. The day offered great times, such as the third 800m followed by the Canadian Marco Arop in 1m41s. Or a 3,000m steeplechase in which the Burgos native Dani Arce was fifth with a time of 8m 08.45s, which places him as the third Spaniard of all time, only behind the last two Spanish record holders: Fernando Carro (8m 05.67s) and Luismi Martín Berlanas (8m 07.44s).
But the tie to this great rally was put by the almost infallible Mondo Duplantis. The Swede, just 20 days after that world record at the Paris Games, in what became one of the great scenes of Paris 2024, showed in Silesia that he has no limits and raised his record by one centimetre (6.26 on the second attempt). “The limit is the sky,” tweeted the account of World Athletics, the international federation, which is already running out of adjectives to explain the achievements of this jumper who has broken the world record three times this season.
The great athletics star, the man that all the organisers want, explained that it has not been his ambition to take another step towards 6.30m, a frontier that is ever closer, which has kept him motivated after his success in Paris, but that it is a 100-metre race, the curious challenge he has taken up with the Norwegian Karsten Warlhom, also a world record holder, but in the 400m hurdles, for next September 5 in Zurich.
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our newsletter.
