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Qatari 400m hurdler shatters Diamond League, Asian and Meet mark with his new personal best
Raajiv Tripathi
DOHA
It was another 'awesome Samba show' at the IAAF Diamond League in Sweden on Sunday.
At the Bauhaus Galan, the sixth leg of the elite athletics series at Stockholm, Qatar's Abderrahman Samba raised his game another notch with his fourth 400m hurdles victory in a row setting new records.
The 22-year-old scorched the Olympic Stadium track, beat world champion and local hero Karsten Warholm for a third straight time and clocked 47.41 to shatter the Diamond League mark, the Asia mark, the meet mark and his personal best!
"I was looking for something big and I got that today. I'm very happy and excited for the rest of the season. The weather was not great it was windy on the back straight which made us push too hard. But it was no problem... It was amazing to get the Diamond League record and a PB today," gushed Samba after the race.
The Oslo race on Thursday did not seem to have any affect on Samba, who showed his enormous finishing kick once again. He caught pace-setter Warholm, who was a stride or two ahead on the back straight, before the home stretch and glided past the fading Norwegian to record an emphatic win.
Warholm also posted his personal best and a national record at 47.81. London worlds silver medallist Yasmani Copello from Turkey came third with a 48.91.
With this triumph, Samba leads the Road to the Finals with 32 points. Yasmani follows him with 23, while Warholm has 21.
Both Samba and Warholm are loving the fledgling rivalry and the Qatari runner said,"It's been great racing with in the last three races (with Warholm). It makes it more fun and more exciting. Now I'll get back to training and I might compete in Paris at the next IAAF Diamond League meeting."
Warholm is also relishing the battle with Samba and said he was coming close to his best shape."It's always fun to get a personal record and keep improving. I won the world champs (London) last year so I knew that some of the guys would want to run fast against me this year. I have done all the work that I can and now we're seeing the good results.
"But of course, I still have some guys to chase. I'm getting closer in each race so I was pushing Samba. He was the better man, of course, but I felt like I did my job and I had so much fun, especially with a PB. The perfect race will come some time as I'm pushing the limits all the time," the Norwegian added.
Samba's record-breaking spree began on May 4 in his home leg in Doha when he came home in 47.57 to replace American Bershawn Jackson's both DL and meet records (47.62 on July 8, 2010 and 48.09 on May 15, 2015). At the end of May in the Golden Gala at Rome, the world leader improved the DL mark to 47.48 and beat the Asian record of 47.53, set by Saudi Arabian Olympic silver medallist Hadi Somaily in the 2000 Games.
In the third race on June 7 in Oslo, Samba bettered another Jackson's meet record of 47.65 with 47.60. And today, he lowered his DL and Asian mark further. Now the protege of South African coach Hennie Kotze is on the cusp of securing his fifth consecutive sub-48-second performance in as many races. The last 400m hurdler to achieve such a feat was Derrick Adkins way back in 1995.
