10 Crazy Stats from Absolutely Bonkers Monaco Diamond League Meet

by LetsRun.com
July 20, 2018

The Monaco Diamond League meet, known as Herculis, is annually one of the highlights of the athletics season, and the 2018 edition did not disappoint with a slew of ridiculous races led by Beatrice Chepkoech’s remarkable 8:44.32 world record in the women’s steeplechase. In all there were world leaders in the women’s steeple, men’s 200 (Noah Lyles 19.65), men’s 800 (Nijel Amos 1:42.14), men’s 1500 (Timothy Cheruiyot 3:28.41), men’s steeple (Soufiane El Bakkali 7:58.15) and women’s 400 (Shaunae Miller-Uibo 48.97) in what was the meet of the year so far on the Diamond League circuit.

We recapped Monaco in a pair of articles:

*What a Meet: Monaco Diamond League Recap: Steeple World Record, Sub 8 for El Bakkali , Miller-Uibo Sub 49 400, Amos is Back
*Beatrice Chepkoech DESTROYS the steeplechase world record, Courtney Frerichs sets American record in Monaco women’s steeplechase

But the meet produced so many absurd statistics that we decided that they required their own article. We’ve taken our favorite stats from those recaps, plus a couple other ones we’ve come up with, and have listed them below. Enjoy.

1) Beatrice Chepkoech is now 8 seconds faster than every other woman in history — and 14 seconds faster than every other woman not linked to doping

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When Ruth Jebet ran 8:52.78 in 2016 to shave over six seconds off the previous world record, we wrote that she had taken the women’s steeplechase “into a new stratosphere.” Since then, it has come out that Jebet may have done so through the aid of performance-enhancing drugs as she has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit as they pursue a case against Jebet for testing positive for EPO.

If you throw out Jebet’s times, that left Kenyan Celliphine Chespol as the fastest woman in history before tonight at 8:58.78. Chepkoech just ran 14 seconds faster than that. For a man to be 14 seconds faster than the #2 steepler in history, he would have to run 7:39. Over barriers.

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Some will look at Chepkoech’s performance tonight and conclude that she must be doping. And, as with every athlete, there is no way to know for sure. All we can do is provide context.

Chepkoech was a 4:03 1500 runner when she took up the steeple shortly before her 25th birthday in 2016 (per Tilastopaja, she had run one career steeple before that, a hand-timed 10:41.3 in Nairobi as a 19-year-old). In the first serious steeple of her life, at the 2016 Pre Classic, she ran 9:17 and got down to 9:10 by the end of the year, placing 4th at the Olympics.

In 2017, Year 2 as a steepler, Chepkoech improved to 8:59. She ran 9:10 to finish 4th at Worlds, but was clearly capable of much faster than that as she forgot to run the first water jump, fell on a separate barrier in her attempt to make up the lost ground, and wound up spending a ton of energy to take the lead by the bell, only to run out of gas on the final lap.

So that’s 9:10 to 8:59 to 8:44 in a little over two years.

2) Timothy Cheruiyot has run five Diamond League races and come away from all of them with a win and a world leader

Here are Cheruiyot’s DL results this year:

3:31.48 in Shanghai on May 12
3:49.87 in Eugene on May 26 (mile)
3:31.22 in Rome on May 31
3:29.71 in Paris on June 30
3:28.41 in Monaco on July 20

Cheruiyot has hardly come out of nowhere in 2018 — he won the DL final in each of the past two years and earned silver at Worlds last year — but he’s clearly reached another level this season.

3) A 17-year-old Norwegian just ran 3:31.18 for 1500 and now is 3-0 in his life against Olympic champ Matthew Centrowitz

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Jakob Ingebrigtsen has been doing insane things for a few years now, but the stats above may be the most outrageous. Ingebrigtsen was born on September 19, 2000, which means that in the U.S. he’d either be entering his senior year of high school (on the older side) or freshman year of college (on the younger side).

4) The third-fastest Ingebrigtsen brother is six seconds faster at 1500 than the next-fastest Norwegian in history

The Ingebrigtsen brothers now sit 1-2-3 on the all-time Norwegian list:

1. 3:30.01 Filip Ingebrigtsen 2018 Monaco

2. 3:31.18 Jakob Ingebrigtsen 2018 Monaco

3. 3:31.46 Henrik Ingebrigtsen 2014 Monaco

Per Jon Mulkeen, the fastest Norwegian not named Ingebrigtsen is Lars-Martin Kaupang, who ran 3:37.4 back in 1976. So if you ran 3:33, you’d be four seconds faster than anyone else in the history of Norway but only the fourth-fastest guy in the Ingebrigtsen family.

5) Matthew Centrowitz’s highest career finish in Monaco is 7th place

This stat isn’t meant as a knock on Centro, who is clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the Americans right now and ran very well tonight to clock 3:31.77 — his fastest time in three years. Rather, it’s meant to display how strong the Monaco meet is, year after year — and just how well Centrowitz races at major championships. Check this out:

Matthew Centrowitz’s best career finishes, selected meets

Olympic Games
1st, 2016
4th, 2012

World Championships
2nd, 2013
3rd, 2011
8th, 2015

Monaco Diamond League
7th, 2018
8th, 2013
9th, 2014
9th, 2017
10th, 2011
10th, 2015

6) Nijel Amos’s 1:42.14 tonight was the world’s fastest 800 since the legendary 2012 Olympic final

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Amos ran 1:41.73 as an 18-year-old in the 2012 London Olympic final, the same race in which David Rudisha set the world record of 1:40.91. Since then, no one has run faster than Amos’s 1:42.14 in Monaco tonight — though Kenyan star Emmanuel Korir will have a chance to one-up Amos in London on Sunday (Amos is also listed on the start list).

MB: Amos 1:42.14!!!!!! 

7) After almost 50 years, the Australian 800 record is no more

One of the most remarkable records in athletics was Ralph Doubell’s 1:44.40 Australian record in the 800 meters. Set in the 1968 Olympic final in Mexico City, it stood as a world record for four years, and though Alex Rowe tied it in Monaco in 2014, Doubell’s mark looked as if it might reach its 50th birthday on October 15 after surviving challenges from Joseph Deng (1:44.61) and Peter Bol (1:44.56) in Stockholm this year.

It was not to be, however, as Deng took advantage of tonight’s fast race to run 1:44.21 and finally end Doubell’s reign. In the process, he broke an even older record as he also took down Peter Snell’s Oceania record of 1:44.3h, which had stood since 1962.

8) The 49-second women’s 400 and 8:00 men’s steeple barriers are finally broken again

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It had been almost nine years since the world had seen a woman break 49 in the 400 and over three since a man had broken 8:00 in the steeple. Both of those droughts came to an end tonight as Shaunae Miller-Uibo did the honors in the 400 (48.97, #10 all-time) and Soufiane El Bakkali halted the skid in the steeple (7:58.15, also #10 all-time).

The Americans will have to wait on a couple of barriers, however, as Courtney Frerichs came just shy of the 9:00 barrier in the steeple (she still ran an American record of 9:00.85) while Evan Jager just missed sub-8:00 in the men’s steeple. Jager has now run 8:00.45, 8:01.02, and 8:01.29, but is still waiting to become the first non-African-born man under 8:00.

9) Noah Lyles ran sub-19.7 (again)

American sprint sensation Noah Lyles just keeps getting better. He’s now won all four of his 200-meter races in 2018, and has yet to slow down. Tonight, in his first race as a 21-year-old, he lowered his world leader to 19.65 to easily win the men’s 200 over 2017 world champ Ramil Guliyev (19.99). Check out his results this year in the 200:

May 4, Doha: 19.83 pb

May 26, Eugene: 19.69 pb

July 5, Lausanne: 19.69 =pb

July 20, Monaco: 19.65 pb

Lyles is now tied with Wallace Spearmon for 8th on the all-time list, and his string of 19.6s puts him in rare company. Per Jon Mulkeen, Usain Bolt is the only other man to break 19.7 three times in one year. Bolt actually accomplished the feat three times (2008, 2009, 2012), and is the only man to break 19.7 four times in one year (2009).

10) The deepest women’s pole vault in history

Before tonight, the most women ever over 4.75 meters in one competition was four, and it had only happened in a world or Olympic final. In Monaco, a staggering eight women cleared 4.75 meters, led by Russia’s Anzhelika Sidorova, who was the only woman to successfully clear 4.85 meters.

In case you’re wondering, the eight women over 4.75 tonight were Sidorova, Yarisley Silva of Cuba, Katerina Stefanidi of Greece, Sandi Morris, Katie Nageotte, and Jenn Suhr of the U.S., Eliza McCartney of New Zealand, and Ninon Guillon-Romarin of France.

More: *What a Meet: Monaco Diamond League Recap: Steeple World Record, Sub 8 for El Bakkali , Miller-Uibo Sub 49 400, Amos is Back
*Beatrice Chepkoech DESTROYS the steeplechase world record, Courtney Frerichs sets American record in Monaco women’s steeplechase

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