Meseret Defar leads in the IAAF World Rankings

By agencies

One of the fundamental rules of the IAAF World Rankings is that only performances from the past 365 days are included towards calculating one’s score. With the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics having started over 365 days ago, results from the Finnish capital are now out of date, causing athletes who performed well in Helsinki but have not had a good season in 2006 to drop in the Rankings. Over the past week, both Europe and Africa staged its continental championships allowing for athletes to back up their performances from previous years, or to record new scores.
The loss of points from Helsinki together with the new performances from Gothenburg and Bambous resulted in twelve new event rankings leaders this week, although some benefited from others losing points and rose to the top without actually competing over the past week.
Ethiopia’s Meseret Defar is the new leader of the Overall Women’s Rankings as well as the Women’s 5000 – 10,000m Event Rankings this week, after former number one Tirunesh Dibaba lost the points from her victories in the 5000m and the 10,000m at the World Championships last year. The reigning Olympic and World Indoor champion stayed ahead of her compatriot and main rival who dropped to fourth in the Overall Rankings, while the two newcomers to the Top 10 are Russia’s Tatyana Lebedeva (Triple Jump) and Yuliya Chizhenko (1500m) who rose to 6th and 9th respectively. Also in the Women’s 5000 – 10 000m Event Rankings, Norway’s Susanne Wigene improved her personal best by over two minutes and surprised many by winning the silver medal at the 19th European Athletics Championships in Göteborg in the 10 000m. The 28-year-old ran 30:32.36 (1384 points) and moved up three places to 8th in the Event Rankings, making her the only European athlete in the Top-10.•