Kipyegon shines again, comes close to breaking another record

Kenya's Faith Kipyegon competes in the women's 1000m event during the Xiamen IAAF Diamond League athletics meeting at Egret Stadium in Xiamen, in China's eastern Fujian province, on April 26, 2025. [AFP]

Kenya's Faith Kipyegon just missed out on the long-standing world record in the women's 3,000m at the Silesia Diamond League meet on Saturday.

Six weeks after improving her own world 1,500m record in Eugene, the three-time Olympic and four-time world gold medallist clocked 8min 07.04sec over the non-Olympic distance.

That fell just short of the 8:06.11 world record set by China's Wang Junxia in 1993.

Kipyegon, who also holds the mile world record and is a former world record-holder in the 5000m, was led around the track by two pacesetters -- American Sage Hurta-Klecker and Australian Jessica Hull, the Olympic silver medallist who ran a world record 5:19.70 for 2000m in Monaco last year.

But Kipyegon had only raced the 3,000m twice before and her previous personal best of 8:23.55 was set in 2014.

After Hull pulled up with two-and-a-half laps to race, all eyes were on Kipyegon, but she left herself too much to do in the final lap and fell just short of what would have been a sixth world record at a Diamond League meet in the last three seasons.

The Kenyan came up short in her specially arranged attempt in June to become the first woman to smash through the four-minute barrier, clocking 4:06.42 in Paris.