Dire Tune of Ethiopia celebrates her victory in the 1-hour race at the IAAF Golden Spike international athletics contest in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on Thursday. (Dan Krzywon/Associated Press)
(CBC) — Ethiopia’s Dire Tune set a new world record in the one-hour run during the Golden Spike Grand Prix meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Thursday.
Tune covered 18.517 kilometres in one hour. The previous record was held by Kenyan-born Tegla Lorupe, who now competes for Holland. Lorupe’s mark for the seldom run event has stood since 1998 when she ran 18.340 km on a track in Borgholzhausen, Germany.
Unlike other track events there is no set distance in the one-hour run. Runners complete as many laps as they can in the one-hour time allotment.
Earlier this year the 22-year-old Tune, who comes from Asalla in the Arsi region, won the 2008 Boston Marathon on April 21 with a time of 2:25:25 and the Houston Marathon in January in a personal best time of 2:24:40.
She is one of six females named to the Ethiopian Olympic marathon pool but at this point the Ethiopian federation has not named the three who will represent the country in Beijing. They have been training at a high-altitude training camp, 50 kilometres outside the capital of Addis Ababa.
Interest in the one-hour run was resurrected a year ago when two-time Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie, also from the Arsi region of Ethiopia, set the men’s world record in Ostrava.
“Haile broke the men’s one-hour world record on the same track,” said her manager Hussein Makke from his office in West Chester, Pa. “When I mentioned the meet director and I had talked about the women’s one-hour record attempt this year Dire jumped at the chance. She said it would put her name in the record books.”
Tune is married but has no children. With the money she earned from her Boston and Houston earnings she has built a new house in Addis Ababa