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Amusan targets world indoor glory after blistering start to new season
World record holder in women’s 100m hurdles, Tobi Amusan, is keen on adding the 60m indoor record to her credentials as she looks forward to the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships, which holds from March 1 to 3 at the Commonwealth Arena in Glasgow, United Kingdom, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
Although dethroned at the last World Championships in Budapest in 2023, Amusan still holds the women’s 100m hurdles record of 12.12s, which she set at the World Championships in Oregon in 2022.
The Paris Olympics also comes up this year and the 26-year-old has made a blistering start to the 2024 season, setting the women’s 60m African record twice in the space of a week.
During her first race of the 2024 season at the World Athletics Indoor Tour in Astana January 27, Amusan ran a blistering 7.77s for an exceptional win, smashing Glory Alozie’s 25-year-old African record of 7.82s in the process.
A week later at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston on Sunday, she lowered the record to a super fast 7.75s for a second-place finish in a star-studded race that was won by the USA’s Tia Jones, who also clocked a new personal best of 7.72s.
After her race in Boston, Amusan revealed that she had eyes on the 60m hurdles world record of 7.68s currently held by former Swedish athlete Susanna Kallur.
“Honestly, yeah,” she revealed in a post-race interview with Citius Mag in Boston.
“Knowing that the first five hurdles are not my forte, and you know we’re working really hard to get that part of my race secured, and with the way things are going, why not? I don’t know but, being a world record holder sounds great.”
She has already surpassed the entry standard of 8.02s for the World Indoor Championships but says her participation is hinged on at least one more race before the tourney in Glasgow.
“Coming into this meet, we didn’t have plans of running at World Indoors. But my coach and I had an agreement, ‘you run three 7.7s, you go to the world indoors’,” she told Citius Mag on Sunday.
“So, this is the second one so let’s see,” Amusan added.
In 2022, the 26-year-old became Nigeria’s first world record holder and world champion when she starred in Oregon and her current form suggests she could be a double world champion and record holder ahead of the Olympics, where she’s yet to win a medal.
Before the World Indoor Championships in March, Amusan has the window of competing at the Meeting Indoor de Lyon February 9 as well as the Belgrade Indoor Meeting February 13 to nail her third 7.7s of the season.
