Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands broke the 23-year-old women’s mile world record on Friday when she clocked four minutes 12.33 seconds in a race held in Monaco.
It was a fitting performance in an event named the “Brave like Gabe” Mile and dedicated to former American runner Gabe Grunewald, who died from cancer last month at the age of 32.
26years old Hassan, initially looked to be off the record pace in the event but finished strongly to edge the 4:12.56 set by Russia’s Svetlana Masterkova in Zurich in 1996.
Hassan, who moved to the Netherlands after leaving Ethiopia as a refugee when she was 15, said “I knew I could run fast, but the first 800 was a bit slow, so after that I wasn’t thinking it would be a world record,”
The young athlete took more than two seconds off her previous best for the distance.
