Omanyala stuns Olympic champion in France and sets new record

Kenya's Commonwealth Games 100m champion, Ferdinand Omanyala, pulled off a stunning upset at the Meeting Lievin Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais on Wednesday, defeating world indoor 60m champion Marcell Lamont Jacobs in the 60m final. Omanyala set a new Kenyan record with a time of 6.54 seconds, beating his previous national record by 0.1secs.

Omanyala took the lead midway through the race and held on to secure a historic victory over Jacobs, the reigning Olympics 100m gold medallist. The Italian finished second in a season’s best time of 6.57 seconds, while Arthur Cisse from Cote d’Ivoire came third with a time of 6.59 seconds.

This was the first time Omanyala had beaten Jacobs, having settled for fourth place in their previous encounter. Last year, the Italian won in a personal best time of 6.50 seconds, while Omanyala finished fourth but set a new national record time of 6.57 seconds.

Omanyala's win at the Meeting Lievin Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais marked the end of a successful World Athletics Indoor Tour for the African champion, where he won in three events, breaking his own national record twice and finishing second in one.

Mary Moraa improves

In the women’s 800m, Kenya's Commonwealth 800m champion, Mary Moraa, improved her personal best time, clocking 2:00.61 to finish second behind the winner Keely Hodgkinson of Britain, who ran a world-leading time of 1:57.71.

Ethiopia's Lamecha Girma shattered the 25-year-old world indoor 3,000m record in the meet as Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis won his third successive pole vault event.

Girma clocked 7min 23.81sec to better the old mark of 7:24.90 set by Kenya's Daniel Komen in Budapest in February 1998.

The Ethiopian raced alone over the closing four laps and was followed home by Spaniard Mohamed Katir, who broke the European record in 7:24.68, a time also under the old world record.

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Girma is a specialist outdoors in the 3000m outdoor steeplechase, an event in which he was the 2021 Olympic silver medallist.

He was also runner-up in the world championships in Doha in 2019 and last year at Eugene. Indoors, he won silver in the 3000m at the 2022 worlds.

World and Olympic champion Duplantis easily won the pole vault with a clearance of 6.01m but the charismatic Swede opted not to try to beat his own world record of 6.21m.

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It was a third successive win for 23-year-old Duplantis in the indoor season after 6.10m in Uppsala on February 2 and 6.06m in Berlin last Friday.

He did enough to defeat Italy's Claudio Stecchi (5.82m) and Kurtis Marschall of Australia (also 5.82m).

Additional reporting by AFP