On Saturday on the Belfast Irish Milers Meet in Northern Eire, 17-year-old middle-distance runner Phoebe Gill of St Albans, U.Okay., achieved one thing just one U18 girl on this planet has finished earlier than her. Gill ran an astonishing 800-metre time of 1:57.86 seconds, breaking the European U18 file.
Her time broke the European U18 file of 1:59.65 set by East Germany’s Marion Geissler-Hübner 45 years in the past and solely stands behind China’s Wang Yuan U18 better of 1:57.18, set in 1993. To place this end in perspective, world champion Mary Moraa of Kenya gained the 800m at Doha Diamond League final week with a time of 1:57.91.
That is how Phoebe Gill set an unbelievable European U18 800m file 🔥
She ran the race gun-to-tape in Belfast, clocking 1:57.86 🇬🇧
📹 @Eamonn_Christiepic.twitter.com/9rRSyDrvdp
— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) Could 11, 2024
Gill, who’s the Commonwealth Youth Video games champion over the 800m self-discipline, cut up a blazing 56 seconds for the opening 400 metres and held on to cease the clock properly beneath the two-minute mark. The time moved her to joint second place on this 12 months’s world 800m rankings, with solely Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma (1:57.73) having run sooner.
“I’m in shock, as a result of I used to be late for the race as a result of I obtained the timings combined up,” mentioned Gill in an interview with the BBC. “I obtained on the market a bit sooner than the 58 [seconds] I used to be imagined to run on the primary lap. I simply stored pushing, and ultimately, I didn’t even clock that I’d finished it. I assumed I used to be dreaming.”
Solely British 800m Olympic silver medallist Keely Hodgkinson has run sooner as a U20 athlete.
Gill, who simply turned 17 a month in the past, can have a busy summer season forward of her along with her record-setting time being selection-eligible for the 2024 European Championships, Paris Olympic Video games and World U20 Championships in Peru.
