Bashir Abdi wants to beat Mo Farah’s record

The Belgian athlete will run the 10,000 meters of the Memorial Van Damme stage of the Diamond League in his country, with an eye on the European record that belongs to his friend and training partner.s

It was announced by The Brussels Times that the home athlete, Bashir Abdiwill try to break the European record of 10 thousand meters in one of the most traditional meetings in Europe, the Van Damme Memorial, scheduled to take place on the 8th of September. It will not be an easy task for the Belgian, as he has a personal best of 27:24.41 (2021) and the European record is 26:46.57, set by Mo Farah in 2011 (Eugene, USA).

I personally find it interesting that Bashir Abdi is trying to improve his 10,000m mark at a time when he is very established as a marathon runner, having recently become a two-time champion of the Rotterdam Marathon, has bronze medals in the Tokyo Olympic Marathon and the athletics world championship (Eugene) and, he has a personal record of 2:03:36, when he won the 2021 Dutch marathon for the first time. Could this be a strategy to try to get even faster and, consequently, improve even more your marathon time? To see. Just to remind you, Abdi is a personal friend of Mo Farah, both are of Somali origin and train together frequently.

The stage in Belgium will also feature other stars of caliber, such as the Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen (in the 5000 meters, I imagine) and the Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis.

Read the original news here and the Full Van Damme Memorial program here