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Defar sets world record in 5,000m

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Meseret Defar of Ethiopia broke the women’s 5,000-meter indoor world record by more than three seconds at the GE Gala on Wednesday night.

Defar was timed in 14 minutes, 24.37 seconds. Tirunesh Dibaba, also of Ethiopia, set the old mark of 14:27.42 in 2007.

With excellent pacemaking, Defar was two or three seconds under Dibaba’s split times throughout the race.

During the final laps, many of the fans at the sold out Ericsson Globe Arena stood up to cheer her on.

“I’d like to thank the Swedish crowd,” Defar said. “The fans were fantastic. It helped me a lot. What a wonderful race. The track was great. I’d love to come back.”

With the win, Defar extended her unbeaten indoor streak to 18 races since March 2003.

Defar took the lead with about 3,000 meters left in the 34-lap race and lapped most of the seven other finishers twice.

The 25-year-old Defar has won Olympic and world championship titles in the 5,000, and she’s as good in the 3,000 with three consecutive world indoor golds and a world record in that distance.

Maria Konovalova of Russia was a distant runner-up in 15:42.37.

It was the seventh record set at the Globe since 1989.

In the men’s 800, 2004 Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy outkicked Ismail Ahmed Ismail of Sudan for his fifth victory in seven races at the Globe.

Borzakovskiy, who has never finished worse than second here, clocked a relatively slow 1:48.13. Ismail, the Olympic silver medalist last year, was seven-hundredths of a second behind.

Olympic champion Wilfred Bungei of Kenya finished fifth in 1:50.11.

Jesse Williams won the high jump at 2.30 meters—the fifth straight meet the American cleared at least 2.30. Russians Aleksandr Shustov and Yaroslav Rybakov cleared the same height and were second and third respectively.

Olympic champion Steve Hooker won the pole vault at 5.86 meters to extend his winning streak to five meets. He failed three times at 6 meters. This month, the Australian cleared 6.06 in Boston for the second-best men’s jump behind Sergey Bubka of Ukraine (6.15).

Angela Williams and Stephanie Durst led the United States to a 1-2 finish in the women’s 60 meters. Williams clocked 7.32 seconds, edging Durst by 0.07 seconds. Sweden’s Carolina Kluft, the 2004 Athens Olympic champion who quit the heptathlon after winning her third straight world championship in 2007, placed sixth and last in 7.68.

Dexter Faulk, another American, took the men’s 60 hurdles in 7.56 and Paul Kipsiele Koech of Kenya won the men’s 3,000 in 7:32.80, the fastest time of the year indoors.

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