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News05 Apr 1998


New world-best for Tergat in Stramilano

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Running at the head of the field throughout the race, Paul Tergat (KEN) totally dominated Saturday's "Stramilano" race. Setting off at a burning pace - which Tergat later qualified himself as excessive, he went through the first kilometre mark in 2:38, the second in 2:39, the third in 2:42. "Perhaps I started off too fast today. In fact, I paid for it at the end, otherwise I would have even been able to go under 59 minutes." Tergat said after the race.

His slowest time for any kilometre of the 21.097 kilometre race was 2:53 (for the 13th and for the final kilometre). And after all this, he sttill covered the final 97 metres of the course in a blistering 14 seconds. His world best time of 59:17 knocked thirty seconds off the five-year-old mark of fellow Kenyan Moses Tanui (59:47, also in the Stramilano) and smashed Antonio Pinto's (POR) 59:43 time, set in Lisbon last month - and here it should be mentioned that the Lisbon course includes a 40m drop between the start and finish points which make it doubtful that the mark would have been officially homolgated.

Tergat had previously set a mark of  58:51 in the Stramilano in 1996, but this mark was not recognised after it was found that an error in the layout of the course had resulted in it being 50m shorter than the official half-marathon distance. He came here on Saturday with the record set firmly in his sights: "I was completely focused on the record. I wanted to break it, I thought of nothing else." And this year, the organisers had made sure that there was no repeat of the 1996 error. The course was measured and re-measured by IAAF official course measurer Jean François Delasalle.

Saturday's win was Tergat's fifth successive victory in the Stramilano, which is one of the great classics of the world road running circuit and followed close on the heels of his fourth world cross country title in the 26th IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Marrakech on 22 March.The half-marathon world best will now sit on Paul Tergat's trophy shelf alongside the 10,000m world record he established last year in the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels - now part of the IAAF's new Golden League..

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