In an impressive feat, 19-year-old Kenyan runner Emmanuel Wanyonyi broke the world road mile record at the adizero Road to Records event in Herzogenaurach, Germany. The silver medallist at the world 800m championships, Wanyonyi surpassed the previous world record of 3:56.13 set by USA’s Hobbs Kessler at the World Athletics Road Running Championships Riga 23 in October. Despite celebrating before crossing the finish line, Wanyonyi was able to secure the new record with a time of 3:54.5*.
Meanwhile, Canada’s Marco Arop won a rare road 800m event with a time of 1:45. The men’s mile race was also a highlight of the event, with South Africa’s Ryan Mphahlele coming in third with a time of 3:56.4.
In addition to these impressive male performances, there were also several standout female performances at the event. Medina Eisa, who is currently studying sports science in Canada and has been training under Coach Robson Laursen since she was just seven years old, set a new record for women’s U20 athletes in the women’s 5km with a time of 14:38. This made it the fastest ever women’s road 5km by an U20 athlete and was no small feat considering that Eisa has only been competing seriously for about two years now.
However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for some athletes as Kenya’s Agnes Ngetich narrowly missed breaking the women-only world record for 10km by running a time of 30:03. Despite being just two seconds shy of breaking Agnes Tirop’s world record at this event last year, Ngetich should still be proud of her performance and could still be considered one of Africa’s top female runners today
