Val-de-Reuil (France) (AFP)

The Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay signed Sunday in Val-de-Reuil the best world performance of the year over 800 m, during an indoor meeting marked by the clear victory of Grant Holloway over 60 meters hurdles and the early exit of Renaud Lavillenie on pole vault.

Five days after breaking the world record over 1,500 m in Liévin, the Ethiopian athlete achieved the best world performance of 2021 over 800 m.

Tsegay completed the four laps in 1 min 57.52 sec, improving his personal best by two seconds, and almost as much the previous record of the year 2021 until then held by the British Keely Hodgkinson (1: 59.03 in Vienna at the end of January).

"It's been a very good week," said the 24-year-old.

“My goal remains the Olympic Games” in Tokyo (23 July-8 August), she added.

The other star of the meeting was Grant Holloway.

Winner in 7.41 of the 60 m hurdles, the 23-year-old American has more than 20 hundredths behind his two closest pursuers.

- Lavillenie without "landmarks" -

“I'm really not looking to break records,” Holloway assured the finish line, as he stayed relatively far from Colin Jackson's 7.30 mark set in 1994 on Sunday. “Records don't just come to you. you!"

If Holloway left Val-de-Reuil hilariously, exclaiming "I love Val-de-Reuil" with a bottle of red wine in hand, the day was more gloomy for Renaud Lavillenie.

The 2012 Olympic pole vault champion left the meeting as soon as he entered the running, failing three times to cross the first bar set at 5.62m.

"I never found the feeling in the hall. I did not manage to find my bearings," lamented the French pole vaulter, who claimed to have been bothered by the lighting of the hall, three weeks before the championships Europe from Torun (5-7 March).

Another headliner, the triple jump record holder Hugues Fabrice Zango signed a jump to 17.51 ​​m, "a more or less respectable performance" by his own admission, but far from the 18.07 m which allowed him to make history in mid-January, by becoming the first man to cross the 18 meters indoors.

"To chain two triple jump competitions in the same week, it's quite complicated," conceded the Burkinabé, five days after his jump to 17.82 m in Liévin.

At the height, the Olympic heptathlon champion Nafissatou Thiam finished second in the competition (1.86 m), behind the Ukrainian Iryna Gerashchenko (1.90 m).

On the French side, Baptiste Mischler achieved the minimum required by the Federation for the European Championships, finishing fifth in 3 min 38.85 sec.

© 2021 AFP