Ugandan Moses Kipsiro thought he had shattered Haile Gebrselassie’s 10km world record set in 2002, only to discover the course was actually 800m short.
Kipsiro completed the weekend race organized by the Uganda Athletics Federation (UAF) in a time of 26 minutes, 14 seconds, bettering Gebrselassie’s 27 minutes, 2 seconds set in Doha six years ago.
But his joy was short-lived.
“When we saw the times coming in we knew something was wrong, because we know the world times and we knew there was a problem,” UAF secretary Beatrice Ayikoru said on Wednesday.
Ayikoru blamed police for the error.
“On Friday, the police phoned and said ‘we can’t run the planned route because it will force us to stop traffic for one hour’. It was too late to cancel,” Ayikoru said. “People had been training. So we measured another route.”
Because the route had been changed at the last minute and some routes had not been clearly marked, the race leaders mistakenly took a turn that shortened the course.
But once the problem was corrected the stragglers were forced to run the full course, Ayikoru said.
The 10km is one of the three category races in the annual MTN Kampala International marathon that attracts runners from Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda and is included in the IAAF calender of events.
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