8 February 1998With the new world record
indoors of 7:24.90 in the 3000m set by Kenya's Daniel Komen in
Budapest on Friday, demolishing by two seconds the mark set by
Haile Gebrselassie (ETH) in Karsruhe on 28 January and less than
four seconds slower than Komen's record outdoors over the same
distance (7:20.67 - Rieti 1 September 1996), and the new women's
pole vault world record of 4.42m set by Vala Flosadottir (ISL) in
Bielefeld on the same day, 1998 has truly opened as the season of
all records.
In less than a month, we have seen a total of five new world
record marks indoors. Gebrselassie opened the scoring by beating
his own world record in the 3000m in Karlsruhe; Maurice Greene
set a new mark in the 60m in Madrid on 3 February, with his time
of 6.39 shaving 2 hundredths off Andre Cason's 1992 mark set on
the same track, a time which Greene had equalled two days
previously in Stuttgart; Daniela Bartova of the Czech Republic
then proceeded to give us the first new women's world record
indoors in the pole vault with her 4.41m vault in Erfurt on 4
February (beating Flossadottir, who cleared 4.35, in the process)
and now both Gebrselassie's record and that of Bartova have been
superseded by these two latest marks.
1997 was an exceptional year for records, with a total of 15 new
records outdoors and 8 indoors during the year. 1998 looks set to
challenge that and we can look forward to 2 new attempts this
evening in Gent, with Haile Gebrselassie taking another shot at
Hicham El Guerrouj's existing mark in the 1500m, after a near
miss (0.58 secs off) in Stuttgart and Gabriela Szabo (ROM) aiming
at improving the 5000m mark currently held by Britain's Liz
McColgan.
