Doha (AFP)

Bahraini Salwa Eid Naser entered the history of athletics with the third best ever performance (48.14) to win the 400m Doha World Championships (Qatar) on Thursday at the end of an anthology race .

At the end of a dazzling final, Naser has achieved the greatest feat of the Worlds so far, the evening when the Khalifa stadium had finally deigned to garnish a bit to provide an atmosphere at the height of the feat.

With a lap of 48 sec 14, Naser is more advanced than the East German Marita Koch (47.60 in 1985) and the Czech Jarmila Kratochvilova (47.99 in 1983) on statistical tablets. This is to say the scope of the event.

Bahraini of Nigerian origin even managed to run faster than the great French star Marie-Josée Pérec (48.25) in Atlanta (1996), where she had signed a resounding Olympic double (200 and 400 m).

When she was only 21 years old, Salwa Eid Naser was not born - by far! - when this kind of time was last performed, 34 years ago with Marita's world record Koch.

With a second 100m ruffling, Naser took the lead on Thursday but has never cracked to win against the big favorite Shaunae Miller-Uibo (48.37). The Bahamian, Olympic champion in title, however did not deserve and broke the record of North America, becoming in passing the 6th best performer of all time! But she came across much stronger than she in Qatar.

Jamaican Shericka Jackson finishes 3rd in 49.47, with a very good personal best.

"It's crazy," said Naser, "I'm running out of words to describe how I feel, I'm so happy, it's been very hard with all the training, I've been hurt." was very hard, now I'm world champion it's crazy, I wanted to go faster than usual. "

And the world record? "Everything is possible now," she said.

- Veiled then tattooed -

Born in Nigeria to a Nigerian mother and a Bahraini father (she was naturalized in 2014), Naser did not go unnoticed in her youth by pocketing the world's gold in the younger girls in a full suit and under a hijab. Today, her look has totally changed and she is a multi-tattooed athlete, sporting several piercings, which has shocked the Khalifa stadium.

Vice-world champion in 2017 at just 19 years old, Naser was then very far from the American gold medalist Phyllis Francis, she was outclassed in Doha (the American finished 5th in 49 sec 61, her personal best). This places his incredible metamorphosis in the space of 24 months.

The progress of Naser is blazing and his coaching change is not for nothing. By switching from Nigerian coach John Obeya to Dominican Jose Ludwig Rubio last fall, has she made another move? in 2018 with four times in less than 50 seconds in a month ?.

If neo-Bahrainia is now the pride of his adopted country, it does not spend more than three-four months a year because of the climate, too hot for his taste. After Antalya (Turkey), she has recently been based in Guadalajara, a Spanish site where she often meets Cubans in preparation. And obviously it's paying off.

© 2019 AFP