America’s Grant Holloway broke Colin Jackson’s long-standing 60m indoor hurdles world record at Wednesday’s meeting in Madrid.
The 110m hurdles world champion ran 7.29sec to shave one hundredth of a second off the record Briton Jackson set in 1994.
Holloway had already run 7.32sec in the heats and blitzed the competition in customary style on the way to claiming the new record, with Britain’s Andrew Pozzi finishing second in 7.51sec.
The 23-year-old had been in great form all winter, running under 7.40sec 10 times.
His two blistering runs on Wednesday — added to his performances in Lievin on February 9 (7.32), Fayetteville on January 24 (7.35) and Birmingham in March 2019 (7.35) — mean he has run five of the eight best times in the history of the discipline.
He is undefeated in 41 races over 60 metres since making his senior hurdles debut just over four years ago, but will have to wait another two years for chance to shine at the World Indoor Athletics Championships.
The event in Nanjing had been pushed back to March this year due to the coronavirus pandemic but was postponed again to 2023 late last year.
However there is much anticipation over whether he can surpass his best 110m hurdles time of 12.98sec at this year’s Olympics in Tokyo
Holloway had initially not wanted to hold a sign which read “world record” while being pressed by photographers, before finally complying with his trademark smile.
The Netherland’s Nadine Visser ran a season’s best-equalling time of 7.81sec as she won the women’s 60m hurdles.
Gudaf Tsegay claimed the honours in the women’s 3,000m with 8mins 22.65sec — the second fastest indoor time in history — and looked in good shape after claiming the 1,500m indoor world record earlier this month.
Ethiopian Tsegay had also run the best 800m time of the season at the Val-de-Reuil meeting in France 10 days ago.
