With his 3:30.54 win in the men's 1500m run at the Meeting Gaz de France, Alan Webb became the third fastest American of all time and the fastest American-born 1500m runner of all time. Only Sydney Maree and Bernard Lagat, both naturalized American citizens, have run faster times as Americans. Maree has run a time of 3:29.77. Lagat holds the American-record with a time of 3:29.30 and has also posted a time of 3:29.68 as an American. He has run faster several times, running as fast as 3:26.34 (2nd fastest of all time), but he ran those times as a Kenyan citizen.
Webb's time in Paris surpasses his previous PB of 3:32.52 by 1.98 seconds. His PB for the Mile is 3:48.92. The 1500m time he ran today is the equivalent of a 3:47.38 mile, which would be 0.31 seconds faster than Steve Scott's American record of 3:47.69. Fresh off of his PB of 1:45.80 in the 800m run and with his blazing kick today, Webb has situated himself as one of the favorites to win the 1500m at the Osaka World Championships in September. Here's a post-race interview with Webb by T&F News.Here's a summary of the entire meet. Yelena Isinbayeva and Sanya Richards were both highlights. Isinbayeva nearly bested her world record of 5.01 with three attempts at 5.02, including one close attempt. She settled for a world-leading 4.91m. Richards redeemed herself after her poor showing at the U.S. Nationals with a world-leading 49.52 in the women's 400m dash.
The lowlight of the meet was the inept officiating in the last event, the men's 3000m Steeplechase. In that event, the lap counters miscounted the laps, leading the runners to believe the race was over when, in fact, there was one lap to go. The bigger blunder, though, was when the officials – thinking the race was over – removed one of the barriers before the steeplechasers had a chance to regroup and run the final lap. This embarrassing gaffe negated all of the times for record-keeping purposes.
