Women's 400m Hurdles World Record Smashed

Yulia Perchonkina set a stunning new world record for the women's 400m hurdles in Tula in the Russian National Championships. The Russian who had raced sparingly this season, set the years best in her heats with 53.52, before running 52.34 to erase Kim Batten's eight year old record of 52.61 that had been set in Gothenburg during the 1995 World Championships.

Perchonkina had dominated the event during much of 2002. runing a year leading 53.10 and comprehensively winning the Europa Cup and World Cup. In between however, she had missed the major championship of the year - the Europeans in Munich.

Conspicous by her abscene in the early part of 2003, Perchonkina only returned to competition with two races in Moscow in the middle of July, but this performance installs her as clear favourite for the Paris World Championships later this month, where the inform Jana Pitman and Britain's Natasha Danvers now look to have a much harder task in hand to challenge for the title.

photo Mark Sherman

Women's All Lists

10 August 2003