Qatar's Abderrahman Samba celebrates winning the Mens 400m Hurdles (REUTERS/Aly Song)
SHANGHAI: Qatar's rising star Abderrahman Samba opened his 2019 Diamond League season in style with a world leading time of 47.27 seconds to set the men's 400-meter hurdles meet record here yesterday.
The 23-year-old, who won Diamond Prize with a unbeaten record last year, clocked 47.27s to smash the meet record of 48.63s set by Bershawn Jackson of the United States in 2017.
Rai Benjamin of United States finished second in 47.80s, followed by Irishman Thomas Barr in 49.41.
"It is a great feeling for the first Diamond League race of the season. It was a great race as Rai and I pushed each other to the line," said Samba, who sizzled 47.51 to win the gold medal at the Asian Championships last month.
"The main goal of the season for me is the World Championships in Doha. This year is a big year and I feel better this year," he added.
Samba's winning mark in Shanghai is nearly half a second shy of his continental record of 46.98s set last year in Paris, which also stands as the Diamond League record.
Samba had sounded a thinly veiled warning on Friday that the world record could be under threat in the clash with Benjamin.
The 23-year-old Qatari dipped the almost unbreachable 47-second barrier last June and the one-lap hurdling star is pushing to touch Kevin Young’s mythical mark of 46.78 seconds.
Young ran his extraordinary time to bag gold at the Barcelona Olympic Games way back in 1992. Few have come close in the 27 years since, and no one else before Samba had dipped below the phantom-like 47-second barrier, an achievement beyond even the event’s most heralded legend, Ed Moses.
So when Samba stopped the clock at 46.98 at the Paris Diamond League meeting last June, it was no surprise that the world record question started to become one of those ‘when’, not ‘if’ kind of queries.
But Samba wasn’t the only athlete entering Young territory last year for Benjamin, then a 20-year-old college runner from UCLA (the University of California, Los Angeles), had already matched Moses’ US record of 47.02 when winning the national collegiate title on his home track at the start of June.
While the former Antiguan – with a famous cricketing father – made that his last race of the year, Samba went on to complete an unbeaten season, gathering Asian Games and Continental Cup titles as he lowered the Qatari record on five occasions and the Asian mark three times.
Yesterday, Samba extended his unbeaten streak that stretches back to the London 2017 World Championship final, when he was seventh.
He has started this year in similar unbeatable form, cruising to a comfortable victory at last month’s Asian Championships in Doha in 47.51, a reliable indicator, he says, of what lies ahead.
“At the start of this season I ran 47.5 and last season it was 47.9, so … Always I am focused on getting better and better and better.”
