Records tumble: Two gold medals punctuate Kenya’s imperious run

By Omulo okoth in Nassau, Bahamas

Kenya’s women’s 4x1,500m relay team poses with the clock after setting a new world record while winning the event during the IAAF World Relays Championships in Nassau, Bahamas, on Saturday. From left to right are Irene Jelegat, Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon, Mercy Cherono and Hellen Obiri. [PHOTO: REUTERS]

Two gold medals, one with a world record, and a national record punctuated Kenya’s imperious run at these inaugural World Relays in this Atlantic Ocean island on Saturday evening.

The first day of the two-day event could not have been marked in a better, if more fitting, style when Jamaica’s 4x200m quartet defied the conspicuous absence of multiple world champion and world record holder Usain Bolt and Assafa Powell to register a world record in a neighbouring Caribbean nation.

But first things first. The first gold medal of the World Relays — the men’s 4x800m — was won by Ferguson Cheruiyot Rotich, Sammy Kibet Kirongo, Job Koech Kinyor and Alfred Kipketer, fresh four pairs of legs that sent a strong indication of a potential seamless transition from the Olympic and world record holder David Rudisha, Olympics bronze medallist Timothy Kitum and Anthony Chemut’s era. The race, won in  7:08.40, had a fair share of drama.

For after all the leg work by the first three, the anchorman — Kipketer — from whom the final execution was expected, almost made the party still born.

Had the race gone a further 10 metres, Polish anchor Adam Kszczot would have snatched the gold medal from under Kenyans’ jaws.

“I did not know they were that close. I was just running my race knowing the gold was under wraps,” insisted Kipketer, amid palpable guilt on his face.

His team mates thought otherwise. “We were panicking because we were watching in disbelief as what we had worked for going,” said Kinyor, the scion of an athletics family Barnabas Kinyor, who competently combined 400m hurdles and 800m during his era and Selina Kosgei, a superb marathon runner of her generation.

As Kenya’s first two stanzas of the national anthem belted at the Thomas A. Robinson Stadium, a piece of history was in the making as Mercy Cherono, Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon, Irene Jelagat and Hellen Onsando Obiri had serious secret plans up their sleeves.

Mercilessly annihilated

The quartet broke the world record at altitude in Nairobi, stopping the clock in 17:05.72, at Nyayo National Stadium on April 20.

(Mercy) Cherono started the 4x1,500m race and mercilessly annihilated the four-team field before handing the baton to Kipyegon with a 60-metre gap ahead of US. Signs were already clear that the world mark was on the radar.

Kipyegon upped the game and made the gap too wide for the US, Australia and Romania to reach, adding about 50 metres to the gap.

destroyed the opposition

Jelagat continued with annihilation of the field, while Obiri ruthlessly destroyed the opposition, finishing with almost 200-metre gap, even overlapping Lenuta Ptronela Simiuc of Romania, en route to a new world record time of 16:33.58.

“We have proved that the world record we set in Kenya was not a fluke. We had planned for it quietly and we knew it was beatable. Even while running in Doha (Diamond League) on May 8, we were just filing the rough edges of a master plan we had put together to improve on the world record,” Cherono told reporters at the post-race press conference.

The 4x200m men’s team may have finished in fifth position, but Jamaica’s world record time of 1:18.63 without Bolt and Powell was prestigious enough for the Kenyans — Stephen Barasa, Carvin Nkanata, Tony Kipruto Chirchir and Walter Michuki Moenga — to have contributed to that epochal achievement by the traditional sprinters. Moreover, their 1:22.35 time was not only a personal best, but also a national record.

“We need exposure both in and outside the country. We have proved our ability and we now want Athletics Kenya to take us to the next level of competition and exposure. They should take us to a high performance training centre to sharpen our skills,” Barasa, the team spokesman, told reporters.

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