CIARA MAGEEAN HAS set a new Irish 1500m record with a sensational run to win in the Diamond League in Brussels.
Her victory came in a time of three minutes 56.63 seconds as she took Sonia O’Sullivan’s place in the history books.
Mageean beat Laura Muir for this latest triumph, overcoming the Scot who had previously got the better of her in both the European Championships and Commonwealth Games.
Mageean’s previous personal best was 4:00.15, and this historic victory not only obliterated that time but it also saw her break the previous Irish record of 3:58.85 held by O’Sullivan, which had stood since 1995.
Elsewhere, Armand Duplantis and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce suffered shock defeats at the Diamond League meet.
World, Olympic and European pole vault champion Duplantis, also the world record holder, failed three times at 5.91 metres.
That failure handed victory to Ernest Obiena of the Philippines. It was Duplantis’ first defeat in a dominant season in which he won two world titles, indoor and out, setting two new world records (6.20 and 6.21m) in the process.
There was a similar upset in the women’s 100m, Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson trumping five-time world champion Fraser-Pryce.
Jackson, crowned 200m world champion in Oregon in July — also ahead of Fraser-Pryce, clocked 10.73sec in a photo-finish with her teammate, at one-hundredth of a second.
