Newly crowned 800 metres world champion Lilian Odira says that teamwork was key to her success in the just concluded Tokyo World Athletics Championships.
Odira, sprang one of the biggest surprises of the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 to run down Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson in the deepest women’s 800m race in history.
For much of the race, defending world champion Mary Moraa looked the most likely Kenyan winner. She led until 600m, when Hodgkinson made her usual surge. She hit the straight in front, but was challenged 50m from the finish line, first by training partner Georgia Hunter Bell, and then by Odira, who flashed home over the final 20m.
She stopped the clock in a championship record of 1:54.62, closely followed by the British pair of Hunter Bell (1:54.90) and Hodgkinson (1:54.91). In a rarity for athletics, all three have female coaches.
Odira, speaking to members of the press on her return to Nairobi as organized by Athletics Kenya, says that she was part of a team effort to retain the gold medal for Kenya.
“We had a plan before the race, which was we must retain the title that Mary (Moraa) won in Budapest, she said of the mission at hand.
“I didn't have any expectations; I was just following the pace of the race. I managed to have the most powerful finish and I got lucky to be going home with a gold medal. We are happy the title is back home, she added.
Odira, coached by Jacinta Murigura, set an almost two-second personal best and took down the oldest championship record in the book, the 42-year-old mark of 1:54.68 set by Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983.
This is the first time that three women have broken 1:55 in the same race, and the first time that five have broken 1:56. Fifth-placed Sarah Moraa (1:55.74) and sixth-placed Sage Hurta-Klecker (1:55.89) both set personal bests. In almost any other race, they would have been on the podium.